

^^fyvVrrv^ 








"** " i n <n » HW i +uMm*m »****WBKmafi9m<« l F»<"< «* 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 




A 



Cloud of Witnesses 



CONTAINING 



Selections from the Writings of Poets and Other Literary 

and Celebrated Persons, Expressive of the 

Universal Triumph of Good 

Over Evil. 



/ 
• By J. W. Hanson, A, M., D. D. 



THB LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON, 



One far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves. 

Tennyson. 



Out of the Strong came forth Sweetness. 

Bible. 



CHICAGO: 

The Star and Covenant Office. 
1880. 



/7> M 



9h 



/4 



COPYRIGHT, d. W. HANSON, 1880, 



GEO, DANIELS, PRINTER. CHICAGO. 



Preface, 



Poets and philosophers, writers and thinkers, those who have 
weighed the problem of human destiny, whatever may have been 
their educational bias, or religious proclivities, have often risen to a 
more or less distinct conception of the thought that evil is transient 
and good eternal, and that the Author of man will ultimately perfect 
his chief work. The deliverance of the whole human family from 
sin and sorrow, its final holiness and happiness, has been the thought 
of multitudes, even when the prevailing doctrines around them were 
wholly hostile; and, in and out of Christendom, the great thought 
has scarcely ever been without witnesses among men. It was dis- 
tinctly revealed by Jesus, in his Gospel, and forms the burthen of 
prophet and apostle, bard and seer, from Genesis to Revelation, and 
it has also brightened the pages of literature in every age of the 
world, since man possessed a literature. 

Twenty-five years ago the compiler of this volume published a 
little work entitled "Witnesses to the Truth, containing Passages 
from Distinguished Authors, developing the great Truth of Uni- 
versal Salvation." The subsequent quarter- century has added im- 
mensely to the testimony that men of genius have given in attesta- 
tion to the sublimest fact in human history that has ever come to 
human knowledge, and the further reading of the compiler has en- 
abled him to adduce authors whose words were then unknown to 
him, some of whom are among the best who have ever written. 

Such men as Coleridge, Southet, Thompson, and Ten- 
nyson are in accord with David, John, Paul, and that Other, 
who " spake as never man spake." 

The Compiler will be under obligations to any reader of these 
pages who shall direct him to authors not named in this volume, and 
their testimony will be added in subsequent editions. 

Chicago, November, 1880. 



NDEX. 



Adamantius Origen, 8. 

Adams Sarah F. , 1 1 , 1 1 1 . 

Addison Joseph, 42. 

Aiken Dr. J., 12. 

Akenside Mark, 15, 66. 

Alexandrinus Clem. ,7,24. 

Alger W. R., 20, 314. 

Americana Encyc. ,2 66. 

Ames- C. G., 2 87. 

Andersen, H. C. , 174. 

Anonymous, 130, 177. 
208, 247,256,280,292, 
307, 308, 314, 319. 

Aquinas Thomas, 29. 

Aratus, 22. 

Argyll Bishop, 9, 1 32, 267. 

Arnold Edwin, 29 3. 

Arnold Matthew, 261. 

Aspland Robert, 12, 79. 

Agustine, 15. 

Bacon Lord F., 23, 31. 

Baillie Joanna, 85. 

Bailey P. J., 2 36. 

Balantine, 11. 

Ballou Hosea, 9 3. 

Barbauld AnnaL. , 73. 

Barbauld Rochemont, 12. 

Barnard Lady Anne, 72. 

Barrow Isaac, 9. 

BartolC. A., 223. 

Barton Bernard, 120. 

Basil the Great, 8. 

BaumstarkC. E. , 191. 

Baxter, 48. 

Beard J. R. , 204. 

Beatty James, 70. 

BeecherDr. E., 8. 

BeecherH. W., 222. 

Behmer, 12. 

BelshamThos., 12, 78. 

Benecker, 111. 

Bennetts. F. , 305. 

Blackie J.S., 203. 

Bleek, 11. 

Bloomfield Mrs. , 286. 

Bohler Peter, 54 

Boimet Charles, 66. 

BostwickH. L., 310. 

BowringJohn, 143. 

Bremer Frederika, 160. 

Bronte Sisters, 240. 

Brooke Stopford A., 258. 



Brooke Henry, 66. 
Brooks H. C. , 66. 
Broughton Thos. , 12. 
Brown Baldwin, 1 3. 
Brown John M. D., 284. 
Browne Sir Thos. , 34. 
Browne James, 12. 
Browne J. Ross, 223. 
Browning E. B. , 199. 
Browning Robt. , 221. 
Bryant, W. C. , 145. 
Buchanan Robt., 311. 
BulwerE. L., 169. 
BulwerR. L. , 297. 
Burnet Thos., 9, 12, 36. 
Burns R., 29, 80, 84,128, 

168. 
Butler Bishop, 51. 
Butler Wm. Archer, 302. 
Buzurgi, 21. 
Byron Lady, 111, 136. 
Byron Lord, 15, 111, 134. 
Caird Principal, 318. 
Calvin, 15, 112. 
Campbell, A. G., 260. 
Campbell, J. MacLeod, 

217, 268, 304. 
Campbell, Thos., 112. 
Carlyle Thos. , 139. 
Carpenter L., 12, 117, 207 
Carpenter Mary, 207. 
Cary Sisters, 
Celsus, 24. 
Chalmers Thos . , 131. 
ChanningW. E., 116,173. 
ChapinE. H., 213. 
Chauncey Chas. ,12. 
Chatfield Paul, 102. 
Chatham Lord, 66 
Charles Elis. Arundel, 279. 
Cheyne, 14. 
Child LydiaM., 165. 
Chrysostum, 15. 
Clarke Adam, 13. 
Clarke George, 12. 
Clarke J. F., 86, 142. 
Clarke J. G., 239. 
Clarke McDonald, 155. 
Clarke Richard, 9, 45. 
Clsfrke Samuel, 12. 
Clarkson, 111. 
Cleaveland, E. H. J., 288. 



Cleanthes, 22. 
Clemens Alex., 7, 24. 
ClephaneE. C, 303. 
Clodd Edward, 206. 
Clough Arthur H. , 249. 
CobbeF.P.,207,255,262. 
Cockburn Alison R. , 72. 
CoganThos., 12. 
Colenso Bishop, 233. 
Coleridge Hartley, 150. 
Coleridge S. T , 15, 37 

87, 90, 111. 
Coquerel Athenase, 104 
Cornwall Barry, 274. 
CowperWm. , 67. 
Crabbe, 79, 80. 
Craik Dinah M., 276. 
Credner, 11. 
Crombie Alex. , 12. 
Cromwell Oliver, 14, 35. 
Cudworth Ralph, 9, 38. 
Cunningham A., 81, 128. 
Dante, 124. 
D'Aranda Peter, 9. 
Davidson Dr., 13. 
Dawson George, 2 34. 
Defoe Daniel, 41. 
DeJoinville, 37. 
Delitzsch Franz, 227. 
Denk, 11. 

De Quincey Thomas, 125. 
De Stael Madame, 69. 
Dick Thos., 95. 
Dickens Chas. , 214, 221. 
Didymus the Blind, 8 . 
Dieslrae, 28. 
Diodorus of Tarsus, 8. 
Doddridge Philip, 53,166. 
Dodweli Henry, 9 . 
Doederlein, 10. 
Donne John, 52. 
Dove, 12. 
DucheeDr. 12. 
Duganne A. J. H., 264. 
Duncombe Wm. , 50 . 
Earburg, 14. 
Eberhard, 11. 
Edinburgh Review, 138. 
Edinburgh Scotsman, 1 39. 
Edwards Jona, 13,15,216 
Emerson R. W., 168. 
Encyc. Amerioana, 266. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 



Epictetus, 23. 
Epicurus, 25. 
ErigenaJ. S., 28. 
ErskineLord, 9. 
Erskine Thos., 13, 131, 

217, 267, 304. 
Espy Professor, 127. 
EstlinJ. P., 13, 75. 
Euripides, 168, 314. 
Eusebius, 25. 
Ewing Bishop, 9,168,276. 
FaberF. W., 93, 104. 
Farrar Canon, 51, 160, 

168,252, 267,285,295. 
Ferguson Fergus, 224. 
Fenwick, 12. 
Field Wm., 76. 
Figuier Louis, 250. 
Foster John, 43, 90. 
FoxW. J., 12. 
FrankJ in Benj., 58. 
Frederic the Great, 65. 
FroudeJ. A., 245. 
Fry Mrs., 17 3. 
Gainsborough Thos., 67. 
Gay Rev. Mr., 48. 
GiradinE., 17 8. 
Goethe J. W., 77, 84. 
GouldS. Baring, 269. 
Greeley Horace, 145,213. 
Greene Gen. Nath'l, 14. 
GregW. R., 255. 
Gregory Nyssen, 8, 26. 
Gregory Thaum. , 8. 
Griffith Thos. , 270. 
GriswoldH. T. , 313. 
Grotius Hugo, 9. 
Gurney, 100. 
Guthrie Thos., 167. 

Halsey , 71. 

Hamilton Sir Wm. ,130. 
HannaDr. , 131. 
HarteBret, 301. 
Hartley D., 11, 45,48,56. 
Harwood Edward, 12. 
HaseKarl, 156. 
Harris T. L., 265. 
Haven Gilbert, 221. 
Hawthorne N. , 171. 
Hay John, 309. 
Hemans F. D. , 144. 
Hetzer, 11. 
Hey John, 12. 
HigginsonT. W., 264. 
Hinton James, 288. 
HobbesThos. , 33. 
Hogg James, 96. 
Holland J. G.,252. 



Holmes O. W. , 195. 
Hood Thos., 152. 
Hopkins Dr., 216. 
HoppeJ. P., 231. 
Ho witt Mary, 171. 
HowittWm., 171. 
Humboldt Alex. V., 87. 
Hume, 72. 

HuntL., 15, 35, 73, 121. 
Hunt Rev. John, 34. 
Hurd Bishop, 12. 
Hutchinson, 12. 
IngelowJean, 293. 
IngersollR. J., 306. 
Irving "Washington, 120. 
James Henry, 279. 
Jenyns Soame, 54. 
Jerome, 8. 

Johnson Samuel, 56, 62. 
Jortin Dr., 14. 
Judd Sylvester, 223. 
Kant Immanuel, 67. 
Kennedy Dr. , 134. 
King Wm., 48. 
Kingsley Chas. ,252. 
KippsDr. , 14. 
KlingC. H., 165. 
Lactantius, 25. 
La Fontaine, 40. 
Laighton Albert, 292. 
Lamb Chas., 15,105,111. 
Lambert Brooke, 285. 
La Mennais Abbe, 118. 
LandorW. S. , 110. 
LangeJ. P., 162. 
Larcom Lucy, 270. 
Latham T. , 176. 
Lavater J. K. , 7 3. 
Lavoisier, 251. 
Law Edmund, 9. 
Lawrence G. W. , 96. 
LawWm., 48. 
LeClerc, 14. 
LeggettWm., 167. 
Leibnitz, 111, 245. 
Leicester Francis, 12. 
Leonard C. H., 200. 
Lessing, 228. 
Letsone, 14. 
Lincoln Abraham, 202. 
Lindsay Lord, 72. 
LipsiusDr. R. A., 248. 
Littleton Lord, 9. 
Lockhart J. G. , 151. 
Longfellow H. W. , 182. 
Lowell J. R. , 246. 
Luther Martin, 11, 30. 
Lytton Bulwer Robt. ,297. 



Macdonald G., 218, 271. 
MackayChas., 218. 
Mackenzie, 72. 
Mackintosh Sir J., 86. 
McLeod Donald, 217. 
MacLeod N. , 217,304. 
Macrina, 8. 
Mann Horace, 149. 
Martineau Harriet, 166. 
Martineau James, 17 3. 
Marvin L. C, 189, 202. 
Massey Gerald, 289. 
Marryatt Frederic, 143. 
Marshall Christopher, 76. 
Matthews, 12. 
Maurice J. F. D. , 9, 181, 

199, 218, 268. 
Maximus Confessor the, 2 6 
MayhewJona, 13- 
MayoS. C. E., 253. 
Miles J. E., 96. 
Mill J. S., 175. 
Miller Joaquin, 317. 
MilmanDean, 9, 140. 
MilnesR. M., 203. 
Milton John, 35, 86, 105. 
Montgomery J. , 94. 
Moore Geo. , 211. 
Moore Thos., 15, 112. 
More Hannah, 121. 
More Henry, 9. 
Mosheim, 24. 
Morris Wm., 298. 
Motley, 27. 
Mueller, 11. 
MulochD. (Craik), 276. 
Munroe J. B. , 300, 
Murphy J. J.. 287. 
Murray J., 14. 
Neander, 11, 2 6, 139. 
Neckar James, 69. 
Newman Thos. , 12. 
Newton Bishop, 55. 
Newton Sir I., 41, 113. 
NicholJ. P., 172. 
Nightingale Florence, 31 7. 
Nitzech, 11. 

Norton Caroline E. S. , 1 9 2 . 
Oaksmith Appleton, 316. 
OberlinJ. F., 71. 
Olshaussen Herman, 11. 
Olympiodorous, 26. 
Oracles Sibylline, 7 . 
Origen Adamantius, 8, 2 3, 

25, 36, 113, 244. 
OrrRev. John, 299. 
OssoliM. F., 210. 
Owen Robert Dale, 40. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 



Paley, 113. 
Parker Theo., 207. 
Parr Samuel, 7 6. 
ParrThos., 12. 
Parsons Theophilus, 152. 
Pearson, 38. 
PercivalJ. G., 149. 
Petersen, 11. 
Petitpierre F. O., 70. 
PicusJohn, 9. 
Pierpont John, 126. 
Pindar, 22. 
PistoriusH. A., 11. 
Plato, 22. 

PlumptreProf., 51, 254. 
Plutarch, 2 3. 
PollokRobt., 155. 
Pope Alex., 49, 6«. 
Price, 111. 
Priestley Dr., 56, 59, 69, 

111. 
Procter A. A., 274. 
Pullman R. H., 306. 
PuseyE. B., 160. 
Pythagoras, 22. 
Quarles Francis, 34. 
Radbod Prince, 27. 
Ramsay Chevalier, 46. 
Raynold, 9. 
ReadeChas., 235. 
RevilleRev. A., 305. 
RelleyThos., 12. 
Richardson Samuel, 50. 
Ritter, 27. 

Robertson F. W. , 268. 
Robinson Anthony, 111. 
Robinson C, 90, 93, 100, 

104, 110, 111, 136. 
Rogers Samuel, 8 6. 
Ross Alex. , 267. 
Rothe, 9. 

Rousseau J. J., 64. 
RushBenj., 59, 74. 
Ruskin John, 248. 
Russell W. H., 255. 
Rust Bishop, 12. 
Rust Geo. , 265. 
Salomon, 9. 
Sand Geo., 169. 
Sawyer Caroline M. , 225. 
SaxeJ. G., 240. 
SayThos., 59. 
Schaff Dr., 24. 
Scheffer Leopold, 261. 
SchellingF. W. J., 109. 
Schenkel Daniel, 225. 
Schiller Johann von, 84. 
Schleiermacher, 11, 24, 

100, 229. 



ScholtenJ. H., 215. 
Schweizer Alexander, 228. 
Scott Julia H. , 316. 
Scott Sir W., 72. 
Scudder Eliza, 286. 
Seebach, 11. 
Selden John, 33. 
Shakspere Rev. Wm. 
S*hakspere, Wm., 31. 
Shelley P. B. , 140. 
Sherwood M. M., 106. 
ShippenDr. Wm., 59. 
ShrigleyJ. Rev., 128. 
Short Chas., 282. 
Sibylline Oracles, 7, 28. 
Siegvolk Paul, 7 6. 
Simon J. F. S., 234. 
Simpson John, 69. 
Smith Alexander, 291. 
Smith E. O., 178. 
Smith Gerritt, 151 
Smith G. Vance, 232. 
Smith Horace, 115. 
Smith James, 115. 
Smith Seba, 315. 
Smith T. South wood, 80, 

114, 133, 134. 
Socrates, 21. 
Sonner, 11. 
SoutheyRobt., 48,87, 88, 

97, 100, 111. 
Spectator The, 285. 
Stanley Dean, 131. 
Steinbart, 11. 
Stephen Sir J., 136. 
Sterling John, 179. 
Stilling Jung, 70. 
Stonehouse Geo. , 64. 
StoweH. B. , 215. 
Strahan Alex. , 217. 
Street J. C, 175. 
Sumner Chas., 212, 266. 
Swedenborg E. , 168. 
Swift Dean, 66. 
Symonds, 142. 
Tauler Johann, 9, 30. 
Taylor, 88. 
Taylor Bayard, 276. 
. Taylor Dr. John, 62. 
Taylor Jeremy, 37. 
Taylor John, 12, 62. 
Taylor J. S., 210. 
Tennyson Al'd, 181,197. 
Tertullian, 8, 15. 
Thackeray W. M., 214. 
Thaumaturgus Greg'y, 8. 
Tholuck, 11. 
Thomas A. C. Rev., 35, 

95, 123, 171, 190. 



Thorn Rev. Dr., 109. 
Thompson J. R., 193. 
Thompson James, 52,174. 
TillotsonJohn, 9,40, 113. 
TippleS. A., 281. 
Titus, of Bostra, 8. 
TownsbendC. H. , 157. 
Trench Archdeacon, 183. 
TupperM. F. , 212. 
Turner Sharon, 315. 
Tyler Rev. John, 12. 
"Oilman, 11. 
Vail J. C, 235. 
Vandyke, 67. 
Vane Sir Harry, 36. 
Van Oosterzee J. J., 244. 
Varnum Gen. , 14. 
Walker Geo., 14. 
Wallace Dr., 255. 
Wallace John, 266. 
Wallace W. L., 308. 
Warburton Acton, 245. 
Warburton Bishop, 12. 
Washington Geo. , 14. 
Watts Isaac, 43, 288. 
Wesley Chas., 61. 
Wesley John, 13, 48, 54, 

87, 88, 98, 111, 288. 
Whewell Wm. , 148. 
Whichcote Benj. , 9. 
Whiston Wm. 12, 41. 
WhitefleldG., 58, 88, 98. 
White Jeremy, 35. 
Whitman Walt, 249. 
Whitney A. D. T, 268. 
Whittier J. G. , 30, 184. 
WilkinsN. C, 301. 
Williams David, 12. 
Williams H. M. , 1 04, 111. 
Williamson, I. D., 120. 
Wilson John, 126. 
Wilde- 2 80. 
Willis N. P., 178. 
Winchester E. , 59, 74. 
WinansRoss, 194. 
Winthrop Theo. , 290. 
WistarDr. Caspar, 59 
Wistanley, 14. 
Woehlner, 11. 
Wolpan Bishop, 27. 
Wordsworth W. , 92, 111 
Wotton Sir Henry, 32. 
Wright Frances, 40. 
Wright Richard, 12. 
Young Edward, 25, 44. 
Young John, 12S. 
Zend-Avesta, 19. 
Zinzendorf, 54. 
Zoroaster, 19. 



A Cloud of Witnesses. 



INTRODUCTION. 

The sublime idea of the deliverance of mankind 
from evil has illumined the pages of literature in 
every generation since, and long before, it was first 
fully developed by Jesus Christ, the destined agent 
of its accomplishment. It is believed that traces of 
it can be found in all the religious literature of the 
world. From the birth of Christ to the present hour 
it has never been wholly extinct in Christendom, 
though owing to the baleful influence of Heathenism, 
the shrines of Christianity were, during the darkest 
centuries of the Christian era, lurid with the fires 
of endless sin and wrath. Some of the proudest 
names in the annals of the church were identified 
with the doctrine, and advocated it unopposed. The 
Sibylline Oracles (A. D. 150) contain it; Clemens 
Alexandrinus (A. D. 190-217), the most eminent of 
the earlier Christian fathers, proclaimed it ; and there 
is not extant a word of contemporaneous opposition 
to the sentiment. The first announcement of the 



8 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

dogma of endless torment, by a Christian, is not 
older than A. D. 200, when Tertullian avowed it, 
but even he does not condemn the doctrine of uni- 
versal restoration. The ripest scholar, the keenest 
intellect, the ablest polemic, and one of the holiest of 
Christian saints, Origen Adamantius (A. D. 185- 
253), was distinguished for his constant advocacy of 
the doctrine. He was followed by Gregory Thau- 
maturgus (A. D. 240) ; Titus of Bostra (A. D. 360) ; 
Basil the Great (A. D. 370) ; Gregory Nyssen (A. D. 
370) ; Didymus the Blind, Jerome, Diodorus of Tar- 
sus, Macrina, sister of Gregory of Nyssa and of Basil 
the Great, and many others (A. D. 370-390). It 
was not until A. D. 394 that the first condemnatory 
word is known to have been written, and at some 
periods at least, during the first four centuries after 
Christ, it was the prevalent doctrine of the church. 
Dr. Edward Beecher shows, in his "History of 
Future Betribution, " that at about the time of Origen, 
out of the six theological schools in Christendom, 
four taught universal salvation as the faith of the 
Christian church. Its written declaration in Chris- 
tendom antedates the annunciation of the cruel 
sentiment since so rife. 

When Heathenism and Christianity had begotten 
their hybrid daughter, Catholicism, endless evil 
became an essential of self-styled orthodoxy, and, 
accordingly, in the sixth century, the doctrine of uni- 
versal salvation was pronounced a damnable heresy. 
This condemnation was repeated by the Councils 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 9 

■which assembled A. D. 649, 680, 787, and 869, 
proving that though not popular, the faith was still 
in existence. A few of those who denied the popish 
error, were John Scotus Erigena, the greatest scholar 
and genius of the ninth century ; Baynold, Abbot of 
St. Martin (A. D. 1190) ; Salomon, Bishop of Basso- 
rah (A. D. 1222) ; the German Stadlings (A. D. 1231- 
4) ; Tauler (A. D. 1290-1361) ; many of the Lollards 
(A. D. 1315) ; people in Canterbury, England (A. D. 
1368); Men of Understanding in Flanders (A. D. 
1400-12); John Picus, Earl of Mirandola (A. D. 
1480-94); Peter D'Aranda (A. D. 1490-8); Hugo 
Grotius (A. D. 1645) ; Dr. Isaac Barrow (A. D. 
1677); Benjamin Whichcote (A. D. 1683); Balph 
Cudworth (A. D. 1688) ; Archbishop Tillotson, etc. 
Besides these, and many other distinguished names, 
may be mentioned Richard Clarke, Bishop Edmund 
Law, Dr. Henry More, Dr. Thomas Burnett, Henry 
Dodwell, Bishop Newton, Bothe, and more recently 
Prof. F. D. Maurice, Dean Milman, Lord Littleton, 
Thomas Erskine, Dr. Ewing, and others. Never 
has the sublime fact that sin will finally end been 
lost sight of, though it was nearly extinct during the 
gloomiest periods of the world's history. In the 
dark ages, when truth and learning were eclipsed, 
and error and ignorance reigned, its opposite bore 
almost exclusive sway, and the persecution, and bar- 
barism, and frightful multitude of horrors which 
then swarmed throughout the world, were natural 
consequences. The condition of the church during 



10 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

those perilous times, compared with its triumphal 
career during the first four centuries, when Pagan 
and Jewish errors were routed by the good news of 
the Gospel, gives us notable proof of the power of 
the truth that "God is in Christ reconciling the world 
unto himself' to win souls from darkness unto light. 
With comparatively few exceptions, but those gen- 
erally brilliant ones, the church entered the gloom 
of the great night of the dark ages, led by the all- 
engrossing falsehood that God would hate and curse 
forever those who should not serve him on earth. 

Could the past open its inexorable doors, could 
the forms of the sainted martyrs pass before us, 
thousands who have entered heaven through bap- 
tismal fires, from the cross and the scaffold, and by 
the dark doors of dungeons and gloomy cells, would 
be seen to have gone with the assurance of a univer- 
sal heaven, and many of them should we hear say 
that they had "labored, and suffered reproach," and 
perished at last, "because they trusted in the living 
God as the Savior of all men, especially of those 
that believe." 

With the dawn of the Keformation, this central 
orb in the Gospel system began to shed its light into 
the hearts of men, and it has promoted intelligence 
and human progress, in the exact ratio of its recep- 
tion. So true is this, that we may say, — given the 
prevalence of this truth, in any age, the enlighten- 
ment of the human mind in that age may be gauged. 
The great German theologian, Dcederlein, has said : — 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 11 

"The more profoundly learned any one was in Chris- 
tian antiquity, so much more did he cherish and 
defend the hope that the suffering of the wicked 
would at some time come to an end." And the emi- 
nent and learned German, Dr. Herman Olshausen, 
says : — "Universalismis, without doubt, deeply rooted 
in noble minds ; it is an expression of the longing for 
perfected harmony in the universe. " 

The entire body, almost, of German divines, has 
always denied endless punishment. Even Luther 
said, "How it may be with those who in the New 
Testament are condemned, I say nothing certain, — I 
leave it undecided." And before the doctrine had 
prevailed much among the English, Germany had 
produced the Universalist writings of Sonner, Denk, 
Hetzer, Petersen, Woelner, Seebach, Eberhard, and 
Steinbart. In 1850 there were 1,600 Universalists 
out of the 1,800 Protestant clergymen in Germany, 
and among them were Neander, Balantine, Credner, 
Nitzech, Julius Mueller, Tholuck, Ullmann, Bleek, 
the great Schleiermacher, and others. Hermann 
Andrew Pistorius (A. D. 1790), translated Hartley's 
celebrated work. Universalism has for a century 
been evangelical in Germany. 

The Episcopal church has always been quick- 
ened by its divine spirit. Previous to 1562 the creed 
consisted of forty-two articles, one of which con- 
demned universal salvation ; now it has but thirty- 
nine, the one condemning our faith having been 
eliminated. When we see to what an extent the 



12 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Truth has prevailed in that church, the reason of the 
omission will be evident. Besides the eminent men 
of letters hereafter quoted, the following have either 
rejected the dogma of an endless hell, or embraced 
Universalism : — Dr. John Hey, Divinity Professor at 
Cambridge, Eng. ; Bishop Warburton, Bishop Hurd, 
Bev. Thomas Broughton, Kelley, Hutchinson, Dove, 
Matthews, Behmen, Dr. John Taylor, James Brown, 
D. D., Bev. Francis Leicester, Bishop Bust, Bev. John 
Tyler, Norwich, Conn. ; Bev. Thomas Newman 
(A. D. 1750) ; Edward Harwood, D. D. (A. D. 1794) ; 
Bev. David Williams (A. D. 1780) ; Charles Chaun- 
cey (A. D. 1787) ; George Clarke (A. D. 1789) ; Bich- 
ard Wright (A. D. 1800) ; Dr. Thomas Cogan (A. D. 
1813) ; Dr. Thomas Parr (A. D. 1825) ; Alexander 
Crombie (A. D. 1829); Dr. Duchee, Philadelphia; 
William Whiston, and Dr. Samuel Clarke. It would 
be difficult to match these names with an equal num- 
ber as able, in the Episcopal church. How many 
more have held our faith in secret, can never be 
known. "The time will come," says Dr. Thomas 
Burnet, "when this doctrine, which is now whispered 
in the ear, may be proclaimed upon the house-tops ; 
but that time is not yet. " 

The English Unitarians have been nearly unani- 
mous in declaring the temporal duration df punish- 
ment. Eminent as defenders of the "faith every- 
where spoken against" may be mentioned Thomas 
Belsham, Lant Carpenter, Aspland, W. J. Fox, Fen- 
wick, Bochemont Barbauld, husband of Anna Lae- 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 13 

titia ; Dr. Aiken, her brother ; Dr. Estlin, and Theo- 
pliilus Lindsey. The American Unitarians are nearly 
unanimous in accepting the doctrine. 

Even the Congregationalists are frequently found 
straying from the savage creed of Edwards. Dr. 
Jonathan Mayhew did this, and Eev. Dr. Davidson, 
President of the Congregational College in Lanca- 
shire, seceded from the Evangelical Alliance, and 
gave the following, among other reasons : — "It is not 
difficult to foretell the reception wdiich the clause 
relating to the everlasting punishment of the wicked 
will meet with among a number of thinking men in 
this country. I know men, of whose Christianity 
there can be, in my opinion, no doubt, w 7 ho hesitate 
about receiving the doctrine of punishment literally 
eternal. I believe, too, there are many highly intel- 
ligent Christians all over England, both ministers 
and laymen, who are either averse to the doctrine, or 
have not at least sufficiently studied it, so as to be 
prepared to subscribe it." Baldwin Brown, of Eng- 
land, has spoken to the same purport. 

The Methodist creed contains among its many 
points of belief no word in favor of endless misery. 
Dr. Adam Clarke and John Wesley have said much 
that might be construed into a belief in universal salva- 
tion, when the finer instincts of their moral natures 
spoke. Had they listened to them, they would have 
been w T iser. Indeed, the great error of theologians 
has been that they have listened too much to tradi- 
tion, and have given too little heed to the moral 



14 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

instincts, which rarely err. What they have said 
when the old creed was forgotten, tells us where all 
men would be if they could but listen to that sacred 
oracle which God has stationed in every soul. 

Other great names besides those in the body of 
this book, have found rest in this hope. Dr. Jortin, 
the distinguished scholar ; Jeremy White, the chap- 
lain of Oliver Cromwell ; Coquerel, the patriot and 
Christian; Siegvolk, Cheyne, Chevalier Kamsay, 
Petersen, LeClerc, Letsone, Geo. Walker, Dr. Kipps, 
Kobert Robinson, Eichard Coffin, Earbury, Wistan- 
ley, and thousands of less distinguished, though 
ardent defenders of the great truth, have rejoiced to 
follow it through good and evil report. 

At the time when John Murray began to evange- 
lize the Western continent, he found many ready to 
receive the good seed. Generals Greene, Varnum, 
and others of the Revolutionary heroes accepted it, 
and when the hated heretic was appointed chaplain 
of the Rhode Island regiment, though all the chap- 
lains united in a petition for his removal, and though 
the religious people of the time abhorred the doc- 
trines he professed, yet George Washington confirmed 
Mr. Murray in his office, and retained him as chap- 
lain at his own headquarters. It is not supposable 
that he would have done this, had he not sympa- 
thized with the generous views of the apostle of our 
faith. 

Every sect has frequently transcended its creed — 
thousands in all communions have gone beyond the 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 15 

narrow limits of all forms of partialism, and have 
openly advocated punishment for the good of the 
punished, the triumph of truth and goodness, and 
heaven at last for all, while infinitely more have 
nourished the glorious hope in secret, as fire shut; up 
in the bones. 

The foregoing names are chiefly of men distin- 
guished as theologians or patriots. But the principal 
object of this volume is to develop the progress of 
this great idea in literature. It runs like a thread of 
gold through belles lettres. The best of our lit- 
erature is embroidered with it, and, in proportion 
as authors have won exalted positions they have 
illustrated the spirit of our faith. 

And surely it becomes us to listen attentively to 
what the gifted ones of our race have said and sung. 
The words of Byron, Moore, Akens.ide, Hunt, Cole- 
ridge and Lamb, are entitled to as much consideration 
as those of any Christian Father. With intellects as 
large, and hearts infinitely larger, and thus better 
developed men, are not their words as weighty as 
those of Augustine, Tertullian, or Chrysostom ? We 
often adduce concessions from theologians, and think 
we have gained something worth our while, if they 
speak in behalf of our faith. But what did the 
morose Edwards, inspired by Calvin and Augustine, 
understand of the prophetic aspirations and longings 
of the human soul ? A gloomy theology had silenced 
the heart's voices. Theologians can expound Cal- 
vin's Institutes, or explain the points of Augustinism ; 



16 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

but for the feelings of the human soul, and for a, 
knowledge of its intuitions, we should go to those who 
have cultivated the gentler affections, and who, 
although they care not to prove a dogma, logically, 
can speak prophetically from the depth of the spirit. 
The heart and intellect of the poet and child of 
genius will speak more truly, and their voices are 
entitled to more attention, than those of narrow sec- 
tarians, who have relinquished to party what was 
meant for mankind. The former have at least given 
free and full scope to the aspirations and longings of 
the soul, which the latter have rarely done, and, 
though sometimes the former have been classed with 
scoffers, it may have been not because of their dis- 
regard of God and religion, but because they have 
hated the foul deformities christened as such. Shel- 
ley was no infidel — he hated the demon the church 
called God, and the blasphemy it styled religion. 
Byron would have been a better man, had he fully 
seen the glorious truth occasionally and partially 
revealed to his soul. Infidelity would have been a 
phenomenon of rare occurrence, had Christian truth 
been fully presented, instead of those gross perver- 
sions at which every intellect revolts, and which 
every good heart loathes, and that in proportion to 
their faithful presentation. 

Volumes of -eloquent poetry and prose might be 
given from our own denominational writers, express- 
ing the great truth in language of surpassing beauty 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 17 

but the scope of this book does not include such. It 
contains the language of those literary men and 
women whose words have passed under the eye of 
the compiler — a portion only, without doubt, of those 
who have enrolled themselves as witnesses to the 
truth of "the restitution of all things, spoken by the 
mouths of all God's holy prophets since the world 
began. " 

An immense number of authors has been 
named to us, while this volume was in preparation, 
the spirit and tendency of whose writings are hostile 
to ancient error, and in harmony with the more gen- 
erous faith of universal salvation, but we have been 
obliged to omit such. The very best of modern 
literature might be compiled into volumes, entirely in 
harmony with the truth. The spirit of our faith is 
the soul of modern literature. The literary men of 
the present generation utter an almost unanimous 
voice in announcing the end of evil, and the uni- 
versal triumph of good, and the children of genius, 
for the past three centuries, Ixave generally accorded 
in sentiment with the children of a higher inspira- 
tion. 

The subject is presented from different points of 
view, by modern writers, and there is every indica- 
tion that the time is not far distant when the Chris- 
tian church, however orthodox or heterodox on other 
points, will be a unit in regarding God as a Universal 
Father, mankind as a Universal Brotherhood, and 
heaven as the Universal Home of the common family, 

2 



18 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

and when the pen and tongue of genius will univer- 
sally declare the 

"One far-off divine event, 

To which the whole creation moves." 

With these preliminary observations we proceed 
to present to the reader such quotations as we have 
found in literature, regretting that while we have 
named most of the authors known to us, who have 
announced the great fact, our limited space compels 
us to omit all but brief extracts from each. 



THE WITNESSES. 



We make our first extract from one of the most 

ancient of the 

"Bibles old 
That from the heart of Nature rolled." 



1% ffettlr-JItmste* 

(Date Unknown.) 

Zoroaster is probably the author of this Bible of 

the Parsees, which commands that 

Every believer shall say every morning as he fastens his 
girdle, "Douzakh (hell) will be destroyed at the resurrection, 
and Ormuzd (the Lord of good) shall reign over all forever. " 

The Pythagoreans said — is it a passage from 

the Zend-Avesta? — 

The One from which all things flow, and to which all 
things ultimately tend, is Good. 

The Zoroastrian doctrine is unmistakably that 
of universal deliverance. Says their holy book : 

I am wholly without doubt in the coming of the resur- 
rection of the later body, in an invariable recompense of good 
deeds and their reward, and of bad deeds and their punish- 
ment, as well as in the continuance of Paradise, in the anni- 
hilation of hell and Ahriman and the Devas; that the god 



20 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Ormuzd will at last be victorious, and Ahriman will perish, 
together with the Devasand the offshoots of darkness. — Khor- 
clah-Avesta, Patet Erani 1st — Spegel, Vol. Ill, p. 163. 

In the same (Naumetaisne 7th) : 

Praise to the Overseer, the Lord who rewards those 
who accomplish good deeds according to his own wish, puri- 
fies at last the obedient, and at last purifies even the wicked 
out of hell. 

The Pythagoreans style this "the most holy verse" 
in the Veda : 

Let us adore the supremacy of that divine Sun in the 
Bhargas, or Godhead, who illuminates all, who recreates all, 
from whom all have proceeded, to whom all must return. 

Alger, in his "Future Life," paraphrases the 
teachings of the Persian Bible concerning the wicked : 

Those who have not, in the intermediate state, fully 
expiated their sins, will in the sight of the whole creation, 
be remanded to the pit of punishment. But the author of 
evil shall not exult over them forever. Their prison-house 
will soon be thrown open. The pangs of three terrible days 
and nights, equal to the agonies of 9,000 years, will purify all, 
even the worst of the demons. The anguished cry of the 
damned, as they writhe in the lurid caldron of torture, rising 
to heaven, will find pity in the soul of Ormuzd, and he will 
release them from their sufferings. A blazing star, the comet 
Gurtzscher, will fall upon the earth. In the heat of its con- 
flagration, great and small mountains will melt, and flow 
together as liquid metal. Through this glowing flood all 
mankind must pass. To the righteous it will prove as a 
pleasant bath, of the temperature of milk ; but on the wicked 
the flame will inflict terrific pain. Ahriman will run up and 
down Chinevad in the perplexities of anguish and despair. 
The earth-wide stream of fire, flaming on, will cleanse every 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 21 

spot and everything. Even the loathsome realm of darkness 
and torment shall be burnished and made a part of the all- 
inclusive Paradise. Ahriman himself, reclaimed to virtue, 
replenished with primal light, abjuring the memories of his 
envious ways, and furling thenceforth the sable standard of 
his rebellion, shall become a ministering spirit of the Most 
High, and together with Ormuzd, chant the praises of Tirne- 
Without-Bounds. All darkness, falsehood, suffering, shall flee 
utterly away, and the whole universe be rilled by the illnmin- 
ation of good spirits, blessed with fruitions of eternal 
delight. In regard to the fate of man, 

Such are the parables Zartusht addressed 
To Iran's faith in the ancient Zend-Avest. 



HuzttrgL 

This Persian poet sings : 

What is the soul? The seminal principle from the loins of 
Destiny. 

This world is the womb : the body its enveloping membrane : 

The bitterness of dissolution, Dame Fortune's pangs of child- 
birth. 

What is death? To be born again, an angel of eternity. 



grates — B. C. 470-399. 

This great sage said : 

No one knows but death is the greatest of all goods to 
man. — Apol. 17. It is impossible that they think correctly, 
who think death an evil. — Ibid. 31. 



22 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

fink,— B. C. 429-328. 

For the natural or accidental evils of others, no one gets 
angry, or admonishes, or teaches, or punishes them, but we 
pity those afflicted with such misfortunes. * * For if, O 
Socrates, you will consider what is the design of punishing 
the wicked, this of itself will show you that men think virtue 
something that may be acquired ; for no one punishes the 
wicked looking to the past only, simply for the wrong he has 
done, — that is, no one does this thing who does not act like 
a wild beast, desiring only revenge without thought — hence 
he who seeks to punish with reason, does not punish for the 
sake of the past wrong deed, * * but for the sake of the 
future, that neither the man himself who is punished may do 
wrong again, nor any other who has seen him chastised. And 
he who entertains this thought, must believe that virtue may 
be taught, and he punishes for the purpose of deterring from 
wickedness. — Protag., Sec. 38. God, the parent and author 
of this system, beholding the world placed in this calamitous 
situation, and resolving that it should not be entirely 
destroyed by the disorder into which it was thrown, again 
seizes the helm, and carefully guides it, that he may unite its 
loosened, and, as it were, incongruous materials, and restoring 
them to their original order, may finally adorn and improve 
them. 



fitamfijf*.— B. C. 330-240. 

Four of the ancient poets expressed the thought 
of the divine paternity : — Aratus, "We are also his 
(Jove's) offspring;" Cleanthes, "Are thy (Jove's) off- 
spring;" Pindar, "God and men are of the same 
race;" Pythagoras, "The descent of man is divine." 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 23 

The hymn of Cleanthes is acknowledged by scholars 
to be the sublimest religious hymn outside the Bible, 
to be found in all antiquity. We extract a single pas- 



Harmony from discord thou dost bring ; 
That which is fateful thou dost render fair ; 
Evil and good dost so coordinate, 
That everlasting reason shall bear sway. 



yhttmjt.— A. D. 49-120. 

Surely, I had rather a great deal men should say there 
was no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say 
that there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as 
soon as they were born. 

Quoted by Lord Bacon in his "Essay of Supersti- 
tion." 



^pttfcitf*,— A. D. 60-120. 

This celebrated Stoic said : 

You do not go to a place of pain : you return to the source 
from which you came, — to a delightful re-union with your 
primitive elements; there is no Acheron, no Tartarus, no 
Cocytus, no Phlegethon ! 



®riS©t-— A. D. 180-254. 

The greatest of all the so-called Christian fathers 
was so much of a Universalist that he insisted on the 
salvation of Lucifer himself, of whom he says : 



24 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

He once could fall before he was bound by the power of 
love, though placed among the cherubim. But after the love 
of God is shed abroad in the hearts of all, it is sure to be true, 
even of him, that love shall never fail. 

His writings abound in statements of universal 
redemption. Dr. Schaff (orthodox) styles him the 
"Schleiermacher of the Greek church," and Mosheim 
affirms that he "possessed every excellence that can 
adorn the Christian character. " Celsus, the Heathen 
philosopher, accused the Christian's God of being 
merciless in threatening to burn the world with fire. 
Origen replied : 

The sacred Scripture does indeed call our God a con- 
suming fire (Deut. iv : 24), and says that rivers of fire go before 
his face (Dan. vii : 10). As therefore God is a consuming fire, 
what is it that is to be consumed by him ? We say it is wick- 
edness, and whatever proceeds from it, such as is figuratively 
called hay, wood, and stubble. These are what God in the 
character of fire consumes. He shall come also as a refiner's 
fire, to purify rational nature from the alloy of wickedness, and 
from other impure nature which has adulterated, if I may so 
say, the intellectual gold and silver. Kivers of fire are, like- 
wise, said to go before the face of God, for the purpose of con- 
suming whatever of evil is admixed with the soul. — Contra Cel- 
sum, Lib. IF, Cap. xiii. 



©fattens JOsrmtftritttts*— A. D. 190. 

How is he a Savior and Lord, unless he is the Savior and 
Lord of all? He is certainly the Savior of those who have 
believed, and of those who have not believed he is the Lord, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 25 

until, by being brought to confess him, they shall receive the 
proper and well adapted blessing for themselves. — StromaL 
Lib. VII, Cap. M, p. 833. 

The Lord is the propitiation, not only for our sins, that is, 
of the faithful, but also for the whole world (I. John ii : 2) ; 
therefore he indeed saves all, but converts some by punish- 
ments, and others by gaining their free will; so that he has the 
liigh honor, that unto him every knee should bow, of things in 
heaven, on earth and under the earth ; that is, angels, men, 
and the souls of those who died before his advent. — Frag- 
menta Adumbrat in Epist. I. Johcm., p. 1009. 



^ntlnttixm.— A. D. 260-325. 

In "The Anger of God" he makes Epicurus urge 
the strongest arguments against the eternity of evil, 
which Lactantius answers in a way to give the impres- 
sion that he knew and meant them to be inadequate. 
Like Young in "Night Thoughts," he pretended to 
defend for the purpose of assailing with greater force. 



m$>— A. D. 270-338. 

The father of ecclesiastical history was a Univer- 
salist. He published a defense of Origen in six books. 
In "De Eccl. Theol.," he says : 

If the subjection of the Son to the Father means union 
with him, then the subjection of all to the Son means union 



26 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

with him. * * * As the Apostle, when he said all shall be 
subjected to the Son did not mean union of essence, but obe- 
dience flowing from free-will, together with the honor and 
glory which all give him as the Savior and King of all, in 
the same way his subjection to the Father means nothing else 
than the glory and honor and veneration and exultation and 
voluntary subjection which he is to give to God the Father, 
when he has made all worthy of his paternal Godhead. 



©}jjm{ritrituni$* — A. D. 550. 

Do not suppose that the soul is punished for endless 
aeons, (apeirou aionas) in Tartarus. Very properly, the soul 
is not punished to gratify the revenge of the divinity, but for 
the sake of healing. But we say that the soul is punished for 
an aionion period, (aiOnios) calling its life, and its allotted 
period of punishment, its seon. 



Hartmtt* % ©mtfe$ur— A. D. 580-662. 

Neander says : 

The fundamental ideas of Maximus seem to lead to the 
doctrine of a final universal restoration, which is, in fact, 
intimately connected also with the system of Gregory of 
Nyssa, to which he most closely adhered. Yet he was too 
much fettered by the church system of doctrine, distinctly to 
express any theory of this sort. — Neander's History of the 
Christian Religion, etc., Torrey's Translation, Vol. Ill, 
p. 175. 

In a note Neander mentions the doctrine of 
Maximus, that 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 27 

The reunion of all rational essences with God is the final 
end of the divine economy, and that God will finally be 
glorified by the extinction of all evil. 

Bitter, the historian of philosophy, confirms this 
statement : 

The doctrine of Maximns, concerning the union of all 
things with God, leads him by consequence to the doctrine 
also of the restoration of all falien souls. * * * * The Word 
of God is to become all in all, and to save all : at the end of 
the world, there shall be a universal renewal of the human 
race. Stated by Bitter, "Geschichte der Christliche Philoso- 
phie," 2ter Theil, sec. 550-551. 



yjtimn ^attfarir tfja l[mim— A. D. 692. 

The Pagan Badbod had already immersed one of 
his royal legs in the baptismal font — according to Mot- 
ley, Vol. I, p. 20, "Dutch Bepublic" — when he paused, 
and turning to Bishop Wolpan, he said : — "Where are 
my dead forefathers at present?" "In hell, with all 
other unbelievers," said the bishop. "Mighty well," 
replied the sturdy Pagan, "then will I rather feast 
with my ancestors in Woden, than dwell with your little 
starveling band of Christians in heaven." With a 
spirit more Christian than his so-called Christian con- 
querors the Frisian chief refused a rite that would sep- 
arate him forever from his kindred, and he died a 
Pagan, but a better Christian than he would have 
been to accept salvation on such selfish terms. 



28 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

%tftpt j§ ttte ^ripit-A, D. 875 

The punishment of eternity, he said, is the 
absence of bliss : 

In igne seterno nihil aliud esse poenain qnam beatae 
f elicitatis absentiam. Evil, being negative, as is punishment, 
neither can be eternal. 

All things shall ultimately return to God. The 
final apokatastasis he dwells upon continually. 



The great judgment hymn of the Middle Ages, 
Dies Irse, virtually indorses Universalism by ranking 
the author of the Sibylline Oracles with David. The 
hymn says : 

Dies Irse, dies ilia, 
Solvet sseclum in favilla, 
Teste David cum Sibylla. 

The day of wrath, that dreadful day, shall 
crumble earth to ashes, as David and the Sibyl tes- 
tify. The Sibylline Oracles declare that the holy can- 
not be happy in heaven until the lost are redeemed, 
therefore the redeemed petition God, and he delivers 
the wicked from the devouring fire, and from eternal 
(aionion) gnashing of teeth. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 29 

JW. Wprnm %jpmm.—A. D. 1224-1274. 

His "Prayer for the Devil" conclusively shows 
that he sympathized with the idea of the deliverance 
from evil of evil spirits. His hope harmonizes with 
the amiable wish of Burns, "Oh, wad ye tak' a thocht 
and men." 

"Oh God," he said, "it cannot be 
Thy morning star with endless moan 
Should lift Ms fading orb to thee 
And thou be happy on thy throne. 
It were not kind, nay, Father, nay, 
It were not just, Oh God, I say, 
Pray for the devil, Jesus, pray ! 

"How can thy kingdom ever come, 
While thy fair angels howl below ? 
All holy voices would be dumb, 
All loving eyes would fill with woe, 
To think the lordliest peer of heaven, 
The starry leader of the Seven, 
Could never, never be forgiven ! 

"Pray for the devil, Jesus, pray ! 
O Word that made thine angels speak, 
Lord, let thy pitying tears have way, 
Dear God, not man alone is weak ! 
What is created still must fall, 
And fairest still we frailest call, 
Will not Christ's love avail for all? 

"Pray for the devil, Jesus, pray ! 
Oh Father think upon thy child ; 
Turn from thine own bright world away, 
And look upon that dungeon wild. 
O God, O Jesus, see how dark 



30 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

That den of woe, O Savior, mark 
How angels weep, now hearken, hark ! 

"He will not, will not do it more ; 
Restore him to his throne again. 
Oh open wide the dismal door 
"Which presses on the souls in pain ; 
So men and angels all will say 
Our God is good ; O day by day, 
Pray for the devil, Jesus, pray !" 

All night Aquinas knelt alone — 
Alone with black and dreadful sight, 
Until before his pleading moan 
The darkness ebbed away in light. 
Then rose the saint, and "God" said he, 
"If darkness change to light with thee, 
The devil yet may angel be !" 

Aquinas says : 

The punishment will not be absolutely removed by abso- 
lution, but while it lasts pity will work by diminishing it. 



%ttipttm Wnutev.— A. D. 1290-1361. 

All beings exist through the same birth as the Son, and 
therefore shall they all come again to their original, that is 
God the Father. 

Let the reader consult Whittier's poem, "Tauler," 
to learn the spirit of this ancient saint. 



(garim $uBm.— A. D. 1483-1546. 

Though the great German reformer seems to have 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 31 

held and taught the opposite doctrine, yet, in his best 
moments he rose above it. In his letter to Hansen 
von Kechenberg, in his later life (1522), he says : 

God forbid that I should limit the time for acquiring 
faith to the present life. In the depths of the divine mercy 
there may be opportunity to win it in the future state. 



TLvnmp* 3Nxm + — A. D. 1561-1626. 

The celebrated Lord Verulam, who has been 
called the wisest of mankind, endorses the senti- 
ment of Plutarch, already quoted in this volume : 

It were better to have no opinion of God at all than 
such an opinion as is unworthy of him ; for the one is unbelief, 
the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the 
reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose, 
"Surely," saith he, "I had rather a great deal men should say 
there was no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should 
say that there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as 
soon as they were born ;" as the poets speak of Saturn. And 
as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is 
greater towards men. — Essay of Superstition. 



Ipfetm JS^fe^-— A. D. 1564-1616. 

The greatest of poets sang the very soul of our 
faith, in his description of mercy. Shylock, a por- 
trait of the partialist's God, demands his just due, 
even though it be the pound of flesh nearest the heart. 
Portia replies : 



32 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

The quality of mercy is not strained; 

It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven, 

Upon the place beneath ; it is twice blessed ; 

It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes ; 

"lis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes 

The throned monarch better than his crown ; 

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 

The attribute to awe and majesty, 

"Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ; 

But mercy is above this scepter sway, — 

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings : 

It is an attribute to God Himself ; 

And earthly power doth then show likest God's, 

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 

Though justice be thy plea, consider this — 

That in the course of justice, none of us 

Should see salvation : we do pray for mercy, 

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 

The deeds of mercy ! 

Hamlet gives expression to the great truth that 
God's punishments are reformatory, in the words of 
the ghost : 

I am thy father's spirit, 
Doomed for a certain time to walk the night; 
And for the day confined fast in fires 
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature, 
Are burnt and purged away. 



fiq Tpnvti H[xriten + — A, D. 1568-1639. 

The author of the immortal hymn, "How 
Happy is He Born or Taught, " expresses the spirit 
of the true faith thus : 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Well, then, my soul, joy in the midst of pain, 
Thy Christ, that conquer'd hell, shall from above 
"With greater triumph yet return again, 
And conquer his own justice with his love, 
Commanding earth and seas to render those 
Unto his blisse, for whom he paid his woes. 

Now have I done, now are my thoughts at peace, 
And now my joyes are stronger than my griefs ; 
I feel those comforts that shall never cease, 
Future in hope, but present in belief e ; 
Thy words are true, thy promises are just, 
And thou wilt find thy dearly-bought in dust. 



IriSftt Jfcfitem— A. D. 1584-1654. 

Selden's "Table Talk" is one of the most delight- 
ful of books. We make this extract : 

Salvation. We can best understand the meaning of 
ao)-7jpia, salvation, from the Jews, to whom the Savior was 
promised. They held that themselves should have the chief 
place of happiness in the other world; but the Gentiles that 
were good men, should likewise have their portion of bliss 
there, too. Now, by Christ the partition-wall is broken down, 
and the Gentiles that believe in him are admitted to the same 
place of bliss with the Jews ; and why, then, should not that 
portion of happiness still remain to them, who do not believe 
in Christ, so they be morally good? This is a charitable 
opinion. 

Wpmm IxAfos*— A. D. 1588-1679. 

Usually classed as a deist, it is probable that the 
views of Hobbes on the subject of human destiny were 

3 



34 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

what put him under the ban. Eev. John Hunt, in his 
"Beligious Thought in England," insists that it is 
absurd to call Hobbes a deist. He declares that he was 
"a believer in the most orthodox form of Chris- 
tianity." But he rejected endless punishment, and 
held that 

There will be a final restitution, and no more going to 
Hades. 



T{vmtm (jumfer*— A. D. 1592-1644. 

The quaint old poet, Quarles, has left a state- 
ment of his religious thought. It is unique, but fine : 

Earth is an island, parted round with fears ; 
Thy way to heaven is through a sea of tears ; 
It is a stormy passage, where is found 
The wreck of many a ship, but no man drowned. 



fir mpmn* Jrtrttm^— A. D. 1605-1682. 

The "error" which Sir Thomas Browne so happily 
describes, in his words seems to wear the garb of 
truth : 

The second [error] was that of Origen, that God would 
not persist in his vengeance forever, but after a definite time 
of his wrath he would release the damned souls from torture ; 
which error I fell into upon a serious contemplation of the 
great attribute of God, his mercy ; and did a little cherish it 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 35 

in myself, because I found therein no malice, and ready weight 
to sway me from the other extreme of despair, whereunto 
melancholy and contemplative natures are too easily dis- 
posed. — Eeligio Medici, Sec. 7, p. 17, of Boston Edition. 



foJju- jpkm + — A. D. 1608-1674. 

in 1853 Kev. Abel C. Thomas visited Leigh 
Hunt, who spoke of Milton. Hunt said, "In his later 
life Milton became an Arian — and he went farther 
than that before he died. How sorrowful must have 
been his reflection that in 'Paradise Lost' he had 
immortalized false and mischievous fables, and thus 
contributed to the perpetuation of monstrous and dis- 
honorable thoughts of the Supreme Being." 

Although Milton has embodied the popular theol- 
ogy of his day, it is very doubtful whether he regarded 
punishment as endless. Jeremy White, Cromwell's 
chaplain, an intimate of Milton, wrote a book 
defending universal salvation, and Milton's theology 
was progressive throughout his life. And certainly 
he frames an argument in the following lines that he 
not only does not attempt to answer, but that can 
only be answered on the ground that punishment is 
limited and corrective. 

O Father ! gracious was that word that closed 
Thy sovereign sentence, that man should find grace 
For which both heaven and earth should high extol 
Thy praises, with the innumerable sound 



6b A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Of hynins and sacred songs, wherewith thy throne 
Encompassed, shall resound thee ever blessed. 
For should man finally be lost, should man, 
Thy creature late so loved, thy youngest son, 
Fall circumvented thus by fraud, though joined 
"With his own folly? That b3 from thee far, 
That far be from thee, Father, who art judge 
Of all things made, and judgeth only right. 
Or shall the adversary thus obtain 
His end, and frustrate thine ? Shall he fulfill 
His malice, and thy goodness bring to naught ? 
Or proud return, though to his heavier doom, 
Yet with revenge accomplished, and to hell 
Draw after him the whole race of mankind, 
By him corrupted? Or wilt thou thyself 
Abolish thy creation, and unmake 
For him, what for thy glory thou hast made ? 
So should thy goodness and thy greatness both 
Be questioned, and blasphemed without defence. 

"Endless punishment, " says Milton, "questions 
and blasphemes God's goodness and greatness, and 
leaves them without defence." Can he have believed 
it true? 



JKr T^nty Tnm + — A. D. 1612-1662. 

Bishop Burnet says of "Harry Vane" : — "His 
friends told me he leaned to Origen's notion of an 
universal salvation of all, both of devils and the 
damned. " These are his words : 

Death, instead of taking away anything from us, gives us 
all, even the perfection of our natures ; sets us at liberty both 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 37 

from our own bodily desires, and others' domination. It 
brings us ont of a dark dungeon, through the crannies whereof 
our sight of light is but weak and small, and brings us into an 
open liberty, an estate of light and life unveiled and per- 
petual. 



%mmt Wntjkv.— A. D. 1613-1667. 

Coleridge gives Jeremy Taylor as authority for 
the following story. In Vaughn's "Hours With the 
Mystics" it is ascribed to Taylor's sermon on "The 
Mercy of the Divine Judgment" : 

Bishop Ivo, going on an embassy for St. Louis, meets by 
the way a grave, sad woman, with fire in one hand and water 
in the other, and when he inquires what these symbols mean, 
she answers, "My purpose is with fire to burn paradise, aud 
with water to quench the flames of hell, that men may serve 
God without the incentives of hope and fear, and purely for 
the love of God." 

De Joinville, in his life of St. Louis, gives the 
probable original of the story : 

"When the king was at Acre, the sultan of Damascus 
despatched envoys to the king, and complained to him bit- 
terly of the emirs of Egypt, who had put to death his cousin, 
the sultan ; and he promised the king that if he would help 
him, he would give over to him the kingdom of Jerusalem, 
which was in his hands. The king decided upon sending an 
answer to the sultan of Damascus by the mouth of his own 
envoys, whom he dispatched to the sultan. With these 
envoys he sent brother Yves (Ivo ?) the patron of the order of 
the Dominican friars, who understood Saracen. While they 
were going from their own lodgings to the sultan's palace, 



38 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

brother Yves saw an old woman crossing the street, who 
carried in her right hand an open vessel full of fire, and in her 
left hand a vial full of water. Brother Yves asked her, "What 
do you mean to do with that?" She replied, that with the 
fire she meant to burn paradise, and with the water extin- 
guish hell, so that there should be no more of either. And he 
asked her, "Why do you wish to do that?" "Because I do 
not wish that any one henceforth shall do what is right for 
the sake of the rewards of paradise, or from fear of hell, but 
simply from love of God, who is so worthy of it, and who can 
do for us all possible good." 



(§ttu-tutrr%— A. D. 1617-1688. 

The great philosopher and divine is emphatic in 
rejecting the Pagan error of endless torment : 

There are two ways by which men may avoid the eternity 
o£ hell torments ; by the cessations of their beings or of their 
torments. See Pearson on article of "Life Everlasting." Now, 
though the cessation of being is what I dislike more than the 
other, though entertained by Smalcius, yet I must confess that 
I cannot conceive how a man can endure pain of sense eter- 
nally with knowledge and consciousness of his fate, when any 
violent tortures so disorder our understanding, that we can't 
be called ourselves ; and, since all pain of sense must arise 
from union of the soul with the body, and the material fire 
preys always on the body, how the body can naturally subsist. 
For if you have recourse to supernatural means or miracles 
to conserve it, then I see no reason why God may not as well 
change the course of nature, and work a miracle for man's 
salvation as well as for*his destruction. 

We shall therefore show what authority this opinion has 
from Scripture, for what reasons it was generally received and 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 89 

understood in the literal sense, what has been the opinion of 
the ancients of those places, how advantageous it is to religion 
and virtue, and the equity and justice of God in this design; 
and then show what inconveniences will arise from the 
removal of this belief, as also what inconveniences and also 
absurdities are likely to flow from the contrary opinion and 
notion. And on the other side we shall give a just and rea- 
sonable interpretation of those places of Scripture which seem 
to favor this opinion, and show that there is no necessity to 
understand them in the literal sense. We shall show that 
several of the ancients have rejected it; that it is inconsistent 
with the attributes of God, with his justice, wisdom and good- 
ness ; that the power of God, which they seem to elevate so 
much by this design, is in reality vilified, lessened and dis- 
paraged ; we shall prove its inconsistency with the plain and 
visible designs of God in the forming human nature ; we shall 
also make it manifest that the design of religion is not really 
promoted or advanced by this opinion, but that it is rather 
hindered and obstructed by it ; that it is not the best motive 
to virtue and morality ; and whereas it is pretended several 
inconveniences will arise from it, we shall show that there is 
no inconvenience or disadvantage in it, but that there is just 
and reasonable encouragement to virtue without it ; and leave 
it to every man's judgment and apprehension to conclude or 
determine whether he thinks it eternal or no. 

After reverting briefly to Tillotson, he considers 
the "Argument from the Necessity of it to Eeligion" : 

This implies that religion and virtue are only secured by 
eternal torments, that this is the only or at least the principal 
motive and enforcement of virtue and righteousness, * * * that 
that virtue has all its binding force, its authority and influ- 
ence, from fear and terror. * * * "We have plain experi- 
ence that men may be virtuous without it ; witness the Jews, 
all those who died before our Savior Jesus Christ, and all that 
believe not the eternity of hell torments. 



4:0 A CLOUD OP WITNESSES. 

He remarks that 

He loves neither God nor goodness that loves him only 
out of dread and fear. 



3&» ^otfam-A. D. 1621-1695. 

Along with the names of Owen, Wright, and 
others who have rejected the Scriptures because they 
supposed them to contain the doctrine of endless pun- 
ishment, must be recorded the name of the eminent 
French fabulist, La Fontaine, who says : 

I have lately taken to read the New Testament, which, I 
assure you, is a very good book ; but there is one article to 
which I cannot accede ; it is that of the eternity of punish- 
ment. I cannot comprehend how this eternity is compatible 
with the goodness of God ! 



%t$n WtMmtu— A. D. 1630-1694. 

Archbishop Tillotson occupied the very singu- 
lar position of teaching that God threatens endless 
torment for the purpose of restraining men from sin, 
without intending to execute it, just as he threatened 
the overthrow of Nineveh. He says : 

The primary end' of all threatenings is not punishment, 
but the prevention of it. The higher the threatening runs, 
so much the more goodness and mercy there is in it ; because 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 41 

it is so much the more likely to hinder men from incurring 
the penalty that is threatened. 

In other words, he preached and would have men 
believe the doctrine of endless torment, though he 
held it to be false ! He cautiously observes : 

If it be anywise inconsistent either with righteousness 
or goodness, to make sinners miserable forever, that he will 
not do it. 



tr %smt Itttttett.— A. D. 1642-1727. 



Whiston, a Universalist, declares that Newton's 
views and his own, were the same. In his para- 
phrase of Eev. xiv: 10-11, Newton says: 

The degree and duration of the torment of these degen- 
erate and anti-Christian people, should be no other than 
would be approved of by those angels who had ever labored 
for their salvation, and that Lamb who had redeemed them 
with his most precious blood. 



Jmurf J«5w.— A. D. 1661-1731. 

In the world-renowned "Eobinson Crusoe," De 
Foe has put language into the mouth of his good man 
Friday, which would become many a good man, 
Sunday, better than the horrible caricatures of Deity 
that are presented. Can the reader reconcile it with 



42 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

the idea that sin is endless ? When Friday was told 
that God was stronger than the devil, he says : 

"If God much strong, much might as the devil, why God 
not kill the devil, so make him no more wicked ?" 

Sure enough. But the Christian replies, humor- 
ously, we think, that God reserves him to everlasting 
fire in the bottomless pit. But Friday, not to be put 
off, says : 

"Reserve at last ? Me no understand ; but why not kill the 
devil now?" Crusoe says, "God does not kill you and me, 
when we do wicked things here that offend him." To this, 
Friday says, (mighty affectionately,) "Well, well, that well. So 
you, I, devil, all wicked, all preserve, repent, God pardon all." 



|ns6p| JiMmn.— A. D. 1672-1719. 

In his "Cato" Addison utters language that only 
a Universalist can consistently employ : 

The stars shall fade away, the sun^ himself 

Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years ; 

But thou shalt nourish in immortal youth, 

Unhurt amidst the war of elements, 

The wreck of matter and the crush of worlds. 
***** 

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 

This longing after immortality ? 

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror 

Of falling into nought ? Why shrinks the soul 

Back on itself ,„ and startles at destruction ? 

'Tis the divinity that stirs within us ; 

'Tis heaven itself that points oat an hereafter, 

And intimates eternity to man. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 43 

Haii $+ _A. D. 1674-1748. 

Though Dr. Watts is not known as a believer in 
universal salvation, yet how frequently he transcended 
the narrow limits of a partial creed, and expressed the 
sentiments of the widest faith. He says : 

The work that wisdom undertakes 
Eternal wisdom ne'er forsakes. 

His soul revolted at the cruel statements of error, 
and his heart outran his head, w T hich, as will be seen 
below, followed after. He says in one of his sermons : 

Whensoever any such criminal in hell shall be found mak- 
ing such a sincere and mournful address to the righteous and 
merciful Judge of all ; if at the same time he is truly humble 
and penitent for his past sins, and is grieved at his heart for 
having offended his Make", and melts into sincere repentance, 
I cannot think that a God of perfect equity and rich mercy 
will continue such a creature under his vengeance, but rather 
that the perfections of God will contrive a way for escape, 
though God has not given us here any revelation or discovery 
of such special grace as this. X grant that the eternity of God 
himself before this world began, or after its consummation, has 
something in it so immense and so incomprehensible, that in 
my most mature thoughts, I do not choose to enter into those 
infinite abysses ; nor do I think we ought, usually, when we 
speak concerning creatures, to affirm positively, that their exis- 
tence shall be equal to that of the blessed God, especially 
with regard to the duration of their punishment. 

John Foster says Watts was "in the same parallel 
of latitude with respect to orthodoxy" as himself, "in 
the late maturity of his thoughts. " These words are 
certainly unequivocal : 



44 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

There is not one place of Scripture that occurs to me where 
the word death necessarily signifies a certain miserable immor- 
tality of the soul. 

Whether he meant it, we cannot say, but surely 

this stanza expresses the largest faith : 

Why do we start and fear to die ? 

What timorous worms we mortals are 
Death is the gate of endless joy, 

And yet we dread to enter there. 

Nor is this a narrower sentiment : 

Why do we mourn departed friends, 
Or shake at Death's alarms ? 

'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends, 
To call them to his arms. 

Bo not the foregoing lines find an interpretation 

in these words: 

If the blessed God should at anytime, in consistence with 
his glorious and incomprehensible perfections, release these 
wretched creatures (suffering future punishment) from their 
acute pains and long imprisonment, I think I ought cheerfully 
to accept the appointment of God for the good of millions 
of my fellow creatures, and add my joys and praises to all the 
songs and triumph of the heavenly world, in a day of such a 
divine and glorious release of these prisoners. This will indeed 
be such a new and such an astonishing and universal jubilee, 
both for evil spirits and wicked men, as must fill heaven, earth, 
and even hell with joy and hallelujahs. 



j)r. Jfoamrfc Jtmttj.— A. D. 1684-1765. 

Dr. Young represents the lost soul as saying : 

Why burst the barriers of my peaceful grave ? 
Ah, cruel Death, that would no longer save, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 45 

But grudg'd me e'en that narrow, dark abode, 

And cast me out into the wrath of God ! 

"Where shrieks the roaring flame, the rattling chain, 

And all the dreadful eloquence of pain 

Our only song ; black fires malignant light, 

The sole refreshment of the blasted sight. 

Must all those powers heaven gave me to supply 

My soul with pleasure, and bring in my joy, 

Rise up in arms against me, join the foe, 

Sense, reason, memory, increase my woe? 

And shall my voice, ordained on hymns to dwell, 

Corrupt to groans, and blow the fires of hell ? 

Oh, must I look with terror on my gain, 

And with existence only measure pain ? 

"What ! no reprieve, no least indulgence given, 

No beam of hope from any point of heaven ? 

Ah ! Mercy ! Mercy ! art thou dead above ? 

Is Love extinguished in the source of Love ? 

Why did not the Doctor answer his question? 
He must have stated it as an objection to the very 
thing he described. In his "Night Thoughts" he says : 

Pain is to save from pain ; all punishment 

To make for peace, and death to save from death : 

And second death to guard immortal life ! 

By the same tenderness divine ordained, 

That planted Eden, and high bloomed for man 

A fairer Eden endless in the skies. 

Great Source of Good alone, how kind in all! 

In vengeance kind! Pain, Death, Gehenna, save! 

Young could not have believed the future state 
of punishment endless. The fact that he recom- 
mended Hartley's and Clarke's Universalist publica- 
tions, establishes this. He condemns endless punish- 
ment in these words : 



46 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Father of Mercies ! why from silent earth 
Didst thou awake, and curse me into birth? 
Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night ! 
And make a thankless present of thy light ? 
Push into being a reverse of thee, 
And animate a clod with misery ? • 

The damned soul may well ask this question. 
But it proceeds to call God "My help, my God, " and 
to say : 

And canst thorf, then, look down from perfect bliss, 
And see me plunging in the dark abyss? 
Calling thee Father in a sea of fire, — 
Or pouring blasphemy at thy desire ? 

Does it not seem that these lines were written 
that the reader might say, "No ! No !" 



T|3ttt$3ij*— A. D. 1686-1743. 

This remarkable man, a Scotch Catholic, was an 
avowed Universalist. He says : 

Almighty power, wisdom and love cannot be eternally 
frustrated in his absolute and ultimate designs ; therefore, God 
will at last pardon and reestablish in happiness all lapsed 
beings. 

In his "Travels of Gyrus," an imaginary work 
intended to show the superiority of the Christian 
religion over Paganism, published in Albany in 1 814, 
he says : 



A CLOUD OF. WITNESSES. 47 

"But what," said Cyrus, "is the desigu of this law, dictated 
by God himself with so much pomp, preserved by your fore- 
fathers with so much care, renewed and confirmed by your 
prophets with so many miracles ? In what does it differ from 
the religion of other nations?" 

"The design of the law and the prophets," replied Daniel, 
"is to show that all creatures were pure in their original ; that 
all men are at present born distempered, corrupt and ignorant, 
even to the degree of not knowing their disease, and that 
human nature will one day be restored to its perfection. The 
miracles and prodigies of which I have made you a recital, are, 
so to speak, but the play of wisdom to lead men into them- 
selves, and make them attend to those three truths, which 
they will find written in their own hearts, upon all nature, and 
in the whole plan of providence. The law of Moses is but an 
unfolding of the law of nature ; all its moral precepts are but 
means more or less remote, to carry us to what may strengthen 
divine love in us, or to preserve us from what may weaken it. 
The burnt-offerings, the purification, the abstinences, all the 
ceremonies of our worship, are but symbols to represent the 
sacrifice of the passions, and to shadow out the virtues neces- 
sary to reestablish us in our primitive purity ; those who stop 
at the letter find expressions in our sacred books that seem 
to humanize the Deity ; promises that do not appear to have 
any relation to immortality ; and ceremonies which they think 
unworthy of the sovereign reason. But the true sage pene- 
trates into their hidden meaning, and discovers mysteries in 
them of the highest wisdom. The foundation of the whole 
law, and of all the prophecies, is the doctrine of a nature pure 
in its original, corrupted by sin, and to be one day restored. 
These three fundamental truths are represented in our history 
under various images. The bondage of the Israelites in Egypt, 
their journey through the desert, and their arrival in the prom- 
ised land, represent to us the fall of souls, their sufferings in 
this mortal life, and their return to their heavenly country." 



48 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

William King, Archbishop of Dublin, wrote a 
famous book in 1729, "De Origine Mali, " which is 
full of the principles of our faith. Wm. Law, author 
of "The Serious Call," himself a Universalist, trans- 
lated it, and the preface, written by Eev. Mr. Gay, 
started Hartley on his way to the doctrine of univer- 
sal redemption. 



ipjmtt Jam*— A. D. 1686-1761. 

Very few have known that the author of "The Ser- 
ious Call" was a Universalist. Not only does Southey, 
in his "Life of Wesley," declare this, but Law himself 

says : 

You say all partial systems of salvation are greatly derog- 
atory to the goodness of God, but that you would say this to 
very few but myself. But, dear soul, why should you say this 
to me ? I have, without any scruple, openly declared to all the 
world, that, from eternity to eternity, nothing can come from 
God but mere infinite love. In how many ways have I proved 
and asserted that there neither is, nor can be, any wrath or par- 
tiality in God ; but that every creature must have all that hap- 
piness which the infinite love and power of God can help him 
to. As for the purification of all human nature, I fully believe 
it, either in this world, or some after ages. 

Except Baxter, there are few men more prized 
to-day among the orthodox, than Law, — and yet,. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 49 

referring to the doctrine above announced, he says in 
his "Way to Divine Knowledge" : 

Let no man take offence at the opening of this mystery 
as though it brought anything new into religion, for it has 
nothing new in it ; it alters no point of Gospel doctrine, but 
only sets each article of the old Christian faith upon its true 
ground. Every number of destroyed sinners must, through 
the all-working, all-redeeming love of God, which never ceas- 
eth, come at last to know that they had lost and have found 
again such a God of love as this. 



JhmnUt J*$m.—A. D. 1688-1744. 

The "Essay on Man" is a Universalist poem, in 
spirit, and this extract specifically expresses the great 
idea: 

To him no high, no low, no great, no small, 
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all. 

* * * * * 

All nature is but art unknown to thee ; 
All chance, direction which thou canst not see, 
All discord, harmony not understood, 
All partial evil, universal good. 

****** 
God loves from whole to parts ; but human soul 
Must rise from individual to the whole. 
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, 
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake ; 
The center moved, a circle straight succeeds, 
Another still, and still another spreads ; 
Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace ; 
His country next ; and next all human race ; 
4 



50 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Wide and more wide, th' o'erflowings of the mind 
Take every creature in, of every kind ; 
Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest, 
And heaven beholds its image in his breast. 



jtoramrf Xfc%mtetm + — A. D. 1689-1761. 

The author of "Pamela" and "Sir Charles Gran- 
dison," in both of those unrivalled works avows Uni- 
versalism. He says : 

How much nobler to forgive, and even how much more 
manly to despise, than to resent an injury ! 

In detached passages the sentiment of universal 
salvation is expressed many times in the two works 
above mentioned. 



Upllrnm lwttmttfa£ + — A. D. 1690-1769. 

The author of "Lucius Junius Brutus" wrote to 
a friend : 

Vindictive justice in the Deity, is, I own, no article in my 
creed. All punishment in the hands of an infinitely wise and 
good being, I think must be medicinal, and what we call chas- 
tisement. "What St. Paul speaks more directly of the recon- 
ciliation of both Jews and Gentiles to God, I am willing to 
understand in a more extensive sense, of the general redemp- 
tion of mankind, at the consummation of all things. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 51 

fefam %mm& Infer*— A. D. 1692-1752. 



The immortal author of the "Analogy" writes 
this sentence, which Canon Farrar says first set him 
seriously thinking, while yet a boy: 

And from hence we conclude that virtue must be the hap- 
piness, and vice the misery of every creature; and that regu- 
larity, and order, and right cannot but prevail finally in a uni- 
verse under his government. 

He protests against the idea that 

None can have the benefit of the general redemption, but 
such as have the advantage of being made acquainted with it 
in the present life. 

The following passage is printed with approba- 
tion, and underscored, by Prof. Plumtre, of King's Col- 
lege, London : 

Virtue, to borrow the Christian allusion, is militant here ; 
and various untoward accidents contribute to its being often 
overborne ; but it may combat with greater advantage here- 
after, and prevail completely, and enjoy its consequent rewards, 
in some future states. Neglected as it is, perhaps unknown, 
perhaps despised and oppressed here, there may be scenes in 
eternity, lasting enough, and in every other way adapted to 
afford it a sufficient sphere of action, and a sufficient sphere 
for the natural consequences of it to follow in fact. One might 
add, suppose all this advantageous tendency of virtue to 
become effective among one or more orders of creatures in any 
distant scenes and periods, and to be seen by any orders of 
vicious creatures throughout the universal kingdom of God ; 
this happy effect of virtue would have a tendency by way of 
example, and possibly in other ways, to amend those of them 
who are capable of amendment, and of being recovered to a 
just sense of virtue. 



52 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

|4tt JtrotHu— A. D. 1573-1631. 

John Donne, one of the earliest of English poets, 
did not believe in the "old wives' fables" which fill 
modern creeds. [Chronologically this extract belongs 
on page 33] : 

What if the present were the world's last night ? 

Mark, in my heart, O Lord ! where thou dost dwell, 

The picture of C hrist crucified, and tell 

Whether his countenance can thee affright ; 

Tears in his eyes quench the amazing light, 

Blood fills his frowns, which from his pierced head falls, 

And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell, 

Which prayed forgiveness for his foes' fierce spite ? 

No! No! . 



%mm mpm#$xm.— A. D. 1700-1740. 

The poet of the seasons has spoken "words fitly 
chosen," and they are indeed as "apples of gold in 
baskets of silver." He says : 

The great eternal scheme, 
Involving all, and in a perfect whole 
Uniting, as the prospect wider spreads, 
To reason's eye refined clears up apace ; 
Ye vainly wise ! ye blind presumptuous ! now, 
Confounded in the dust, adore that Power, 
And Wisdom oft arraigned : see now the cause 
Why unassuming worth in secret lived, 
And died, neglected ; why the good man's share 
In life was gall and bitterness of soul ; 
Why the lone widow and her orphans pined 
In starving solitude, while Luxury, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 53 

In palaces, lay straining her low thought, 
To form unreal wants ; why heaven-born truth, 
And moderation fair, wore the red marks 
Of superstition's scourge ; why licensed pain, 
That cruel soldier, that embosomed foe, 
Embittered all our bliss. Ye good distressed ! 
Ye noble few ! who here unbending stand 
Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up a while 
And what your bounded view, which only saw 
A little part, deemed evil, is no more ; 
The storms of wintry time will quickly pass, 
And one unbounded Spring encircle all. 
***** 
'Tis naught to me : 
Since God is ever present, ever felt, 
In the void waste as in the city full ; 
And where he vital breathes, there must be joy. 
When even at last the solemn hour shall come, 
And wing my mystic flight to future worlds, 
I cheerful will obey ; there, with new powers, 
Will rising wonders sing ; I cannot go 
Where Universal Love smiles not around, 
Sustaining all yon orbs and all their suns ; 
Prom seeming evil still educing good, 
And better thence again, and better still, 
In infinite progression. 



|r* JPp $nititrfap + — A. D. 1702-1751. 

Dr. Doddridge, one of the canonized among pop- 
ular Christians, must have doubted endless misery. 
He says : 

We cannot pretend to decide a priori, or previous to the 
event, so far as to say that the punishments of hell must and 
will certainly be eternal. 



54: A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

gdjtt %$£$%.— A. D. 1703-1791. 

Wesley quotes this from the Moravian literature 
of his time, apparently without disapprobation : 

The name of the wicked shall not be so much as men- 
tioned on the great day. — Seven Discourses. By his (Christ's) 
name all can and shall obtain life and salvation. — Sixteen 
Discourses. 

Peter Bohler, Wesley's intimate friend, wrote (see 
Whitfield's Life) : 

All the damned souls shall yet be brought out of hell. 

Bohler was afterwards made Bishop of American 
Moravians, next in rank to Zinzendorf. These quota- 
tions show how far Wesley was, in his sympathies, 
from many of his followers. 



ftrmtn} g$mjn$ + — A. D. 1704-1787. 

This author, in his "Origin of Evil," gives us 

some fine passages on the final triumph of Good. He 

says : 

If there's a power above us, 
(And that there is, all nature cries aloud 
Through all her works,) he must delight in virtue, 
And that which he delights in must be happy. 

Death, the last and most dreadful of all evils, is so far from 
being one, that it is the infallible cure of all others. 

To die is landing on some silent shore, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 55 

Where billows never beat, nor tempests roar; 

Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er. * * 

How little they [ministers] God's counsels comprehend, 

The universal parent, guardian, friend ! 

"Who forming by degrees to bless mankind, 

This globe our sportive nursery assigned. 

Scarce any ill to human life belongs, 

But what our follies cause, or mutual wrongs, 

Or if some stripes from Providence we feel, 

He strikes with pity, and but wounds to heal ! 

O would mankind but make these truths their guide, 

And force the helm from prejudice and pride, 

Were once these maxims fixed, that God's our friend, 

Yirtue our good, and happiness our end, 

How soon must reason o'er the world prevail, 

And error, fraud, and superstition fail. 

None would hereafter, then, with groundless fear, 

Describe the almighty cruel and severe 

Inflicting endless pain for transient crimes, 

And favoring sects or nations, men or climes. 

None would fierce zeal for piety mistake, 

Or malice, for whatever tenet's sake, 

Or think salvation to a few confined, 

And heaven too narrow to contain mankind. 



Jidprp Ifsttttot.— A. D. 170^1782. 

Bishop Newton, of the English church, thus puts 
himself on record against the doctrine of eternal pun- 
ishment : 

Imagine such a doctrine, you may ; but seriously believe 
in it you never can. The thought is too shocking even to 
human nature ; how much more abhorrent, then, must it be 



56 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

from divine perfection. The creator must have made all his 
creatures finally to be happy ; and could never form any one 
whose end he foreknew would be misery everlasting. We can 
be sure of nothing, if we are not sure of this. 



JMit ^nvtlty.— A. D. 1705-1757. 

Dr. Samuel Johnson one day observing a friend 
laying aside the volumes of Dr. Hartley's "Observa- 
tions on Man" as companions for a country trip, said 
in his ex cathedra way : — " Sir, you do right to take 
Dr. Hartley with you." Dr. Priestley is also on record 
as giving approval to Hartley, and as saying that he 
"had learned more from Hartley, than from any book 
he had ever read except the Bible." Dr. Hartley was 
a confessed believer in final restoration. His great 
work, < 'Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty 
and His Expectations," abounds in passages in which 
this faith is expressed. In the closing chapter, after 
arguing the final happiness of all from reason and the 
Scripture, he adds : 

I have now gone through with my observations on the 
frame, duty and expectations of man, finishing them with the 
doctrine of ultimate unlimited happiness to all. This doctrine, 
if it be true, ought at once to dispel all gloominess, anxiety 
and sorrow from our hearts; and raise them to the highest 
pitch of love, adoration and gratitude towards God, our most 
bountiful Creator and merciful Father, and the inexhaustible 
source of all happiness and perfection. Here self-interest, 
benevolence and piety all concur to move and exalt our affec- 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 57 

"tions. How happy in himself, how benevolent to others, and 
Ilow thankful to God ought that man to be, who believes both 
.himself and others born to an infinite expectation ! 

Dr. Hartley's opinion as to the practical influence 
of this faith is given in the following -words : 

If we embrace the opinion of universal restoration, then all 
the exhortations contained both in the word and the works of 
God will produce their genuine effects and concur to work in 
us dispositions fit to receive happiness ultimately. 

I thank God that he has at last brought me to a lively sense 
of the infinite goodness and mercy to all his creatures, and that 
I see it in all his works, and in every page of his word. This has 
made me much more indifferent to this world than ever, at 
the same time that I enjoy it more; it has taught me to love 
every man and to rejoice in the happiness which our Heavenly 
Father intends for all his creatures ; and has quite dispersed 
all the gloomy and melancholy thoughts which arise from the 
apprehension of eternal misery for myself or friends. 

How long, or how much God will punish wicked men, he 
has nowhere said, and therefore I cannot tell ; but this I am 
sure of, that in judgment he will remember mercy ; that he 
will not be extreme to mark what is done amiss ; that he chas- 
tens only because he loves ; that he will not return to destroy, 
because he is God and not man ; that is, has none of our fool- 
ish passions ; that his tender mercies are over all his works, 
and that he is even love itself. I could almost transcribe the 
whole Bible, and the conclusion I draw from the whole is this : 
— First, — That no man can ever be happy till he is holy ; till 
his affections are taken off from this vain world, and set upon 
a better ; and till he loves God above all things, and his neigh- 
bor as himself. Secondly, — That all the evils and miseries 
which God sends upon us, are for no other purpose but to 
"bring us to himself, to the knowledge and practice of our duty, 
and that as soon as that is done they will have an end. 



58 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Many men are so foolish as to fight against God all their 
lives, and to die full of obstinacy and perverseness. However, 
God's method of dealing with them in another world is still 
full of mercy, though it is severe. He will force them at last to 
comply, and make them happy whether they will or no. In 
the meantime, those who are of an humble and contrite heart, 
have nothing to fear, even here. God will conduct them 
through all the afflictions which he thinks fit to lay upon 
them for their good, with infinite tenderness and compassion. 



Summit 1[rs«&fttt*— A. D. 1706-1790. 

The great sage who "snatched fire from heaven 
and the scepter from tyrants, " had no sympathy with 
the gloomy and dreadful theology of his times. His 
daughter, at whose house he died, tells us that Frank- 
lin thought 

No system in the Christian world was so well calculated 
to promote the interests of society, as the doctrine which 
showed a God reconciling a lapsed world unto himself. 

On the death of his brother he wrote : 

Our friend and we were invited abroad on a party of 
pleasure which is to last forever. His chair was ready first ; 
and he has gone before us. We could not all conveniently 
start together, and why should you and I be grieved at this : 
since we are soon to follow, and know where to find him ? 

In a letter to (Jeorge Whitefield, he wrote : 

You will see in this, my notion of good works, — that I 
am far from expecting to merit heaven by them. By heaven 
we understand a state of happiness infinite in degree, and 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 59 

eternal in duration. I can do nothing to deserve such a reward. 
He that for giving a draught of water to a thirsty person 
should expect to be paid "with a good plantation, would be 
modest in his demands compared with those who think they 
deserve heaven for the little good they do on earth. For my 
part, I have not the vanity to think I deserve it, the folly to 
expect it, or the ambition to desire it, but content myself in 
submitting myself to the disposal of that God who made me, 
who has hitherto preserved and blessed me, and in whose 
fatherly goodness I may well confide that he will never make 
me miserable, and that the affliction I may at any time suffer, 
may tend to my benefit. 

When the celebrated Eev. Elhanan Winchester 
renounced the Baptist faith and became a Universal- 
ist, several of the first men in the city gave him encour- 
agement to preach his new doctrine. Among these 
were Dr. Franklin, Dr. Eush, Dr. Priestley, Dr. Wil- 
liam Shippen, Dr. Caspar Wistar, and others. 



Thomas Say was a Philadelphia Friend, but a 
very decided and outspoken Universalist. We find 
evidence of his faith in his "Life," which was printed 
by Budd & Bartram, Philadelphia, 1776. On page M 
he says : 

And now, having showed by a few arguments that the 
variety of God's dispensations to man is alone the effect of his 
universal omnipotent and never ending love to his creatures, 



60 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

and which in the end, must and will accomplish the salvation 
"of all men, especially of those that believe." 

On page 5 he writes : 

Some writers have thought that the promulgation of 
the doctrine of universal benevolence and restoration of 
man, might do injury at this time, but I believe differently, 
and think that every soul which can be made fully sensible of 
this extraordinary divine love to the creation will be a hum- 
bled creature, and often have to adore the great, powerful, con- 
descending mercy and love. 

In his ' 'Essay on the Impartiality of God," he 
considers the case of Moses and Pharaoh, and of the 
Jews and the Egyptians, to show that, though their 
treatment was different, God was not partial to either ; 
but treated them according to their different necessi- 
ties, for the good of both, and the benefit of the human 
race through the lessons thus taught in their histories. 
He then says : 

Let no man stop me here, and object to this, by saying 
that God drowned the Egyptians in the Red Sea, while he 
caused the Israelites to pass over safely; for if he does I will 
answer that God overthrew those very Israelites, whom he 
carried safe through the Red Sea, in the wilderness, destroy- 
ing them with as great a destruction there, as he did the Egypt- 
ians in the Red Sea ; and I moreover add, that those Israelites 
and those Egyptians who fell, had lived as long upon earth as 
the dispensations of God, in this world, could benefit either 
of them ; and therefore, they were both carried into another 
state and more effectual dispensation, where they will, in 
the end, receive the adoption of sons ; for "when God shall 
bring again the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, and 
the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, then will he bring 
again the caj)tivity of these captives in the midst of them ; for 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 61 

lie will remember his covenant with them, in the days of their 
youth, and will establish unto them an everlasting covenant," 
(Ezek. xvi : 53, etc.) making them partake, by those more power- 
ful dispensations, of the same good which their children and 
the whole world received by the dispensation which brought 
death to them. 

After this manner reasons the apostle in his epistle to the 
Eomans, mentioned above. While he beautifully opens the 
mystery of the divine goodness in the different dispensations 
of his providence, he concludes that the choosing of the Jews, 
would, in the end, prove the salvation of the Gentiles, and 
again that the choosing of the Gentiles would end in the 
salvation of the Jews; and that God has concluded all in 
unbelief that he might have mercy upon all ; (Romans, Chap, xi) 
thus making their fall in turns prove the rising of both ; thereby 
showing incontestably that his ways are not as our ways, 
neither are his thoughts as our thoughts ; but as the heavens 
are above the earth, so are his ways above our ways, and his 
thoughts above our thoughts ; making what we think ends in 
damnation, to land in salvation. "Therefore, let no man hence- 
forth judge after the appearance, but judge righteous judg- 
ment." * * * 



Sfcmfe Wi&i®}+— A. D. 1708-1788. 

The great achievement of the Methodist move- 
ment of the last one hundred and fifty years has been 
the utter defeat of Calvinism. If the brother of the 
founder of Methodism hated anything with a righteous 
hatred it was the Calvinistic theology. "The horrible 
decree !" was one of his most frequent exclamations as 
he attuned his tongue to sing the glories of free grace. 



62 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

The doctrines of election and reprobation were to him 
the sum of all that was satanic. 

Horror, to think that God is hate, 

Fury in God can dwell ! 
God could an helpless world create 

To thrust them into hell ! 

Doom them an endless death to die, 
From which they could not flee ! 

No, Lord ! Thine inmost bowels cry 
Against the dire decree ! 

Believe who will that human pain 

Pleasing to God can prove ; 
Let Moloch feast him with the slain ; 

Our God, we know, is love. 

Lord, if indeed without a bound 

Infinite love thou art, 
The horrible decree confound ; 

Enlarge thy people's heart. 



Jfcramrf !4jmm + — A. D. 1709-1784. 

Dr. Johnson wrote twenty-five sermons for his 
friend Dr. John Taylor, Prebendary of Westminster, 
which were preached by the latter, and published at 
his death as the compositions of the great moralist. 
In one of them is this explicit language : 

In our present state, it is impossible to practice this or 
any other duty, in perfection. "We cannot trust God as we 
ought because we cannot know him as we ought. We know, how- 
ever, that he is infinite in wisdom, in power, and in goodness ; 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. G3 

that therefore he designs the happiness of all his creatures ; that 
he cannot but know the proper means by which this end may 
be obtained ; and that, in the use of these means, as he can- 
not be mistaken because he is omniscient, so he cannot be 
defeated because he is almighty. 

In the sermon on the text, "The Lord is good to 
all, and his tender mercies are over all his works," 
Dr. Johnson thus speaks : 

Without goodness, what apprehensions could we enter- 
tain of all the other attributes of the Divine Being? Without 
the utmost extent of benevolence and mercy, they would 
hardly be perfections or excellences. And what would a uni- 
versal administration produce in the hand of an evil, or a par- 
tial, or malevolent direction, but scenes of horror and devas- 
tation ? Not affliction and punishment for the sake of disci- 
pline and correction, to prevent the offense and reform the 
sinner ; but heavy judgments and dreadful vengeance to de- 
stroy him ; or implacable wrath, or fiery indignation, to pro- 
long his misery, and extend the duration of his torture through 
the revolving periods of an endless eternity. 

No bounds can be fixed to the Divine presence, nor is any 
part of illimitable space without his inspection and active influ- 
ence. There is nothing remote or obscure to him, nor any 
exception to his favor among all the works of his hands. Far and 
wide as is the vast range of existence, so is the divine benev- 
olence extended ; and both in the previous trial and final retri- 
bution of all his rational and moral productions, "the Lord is 
good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works." 

We can only reconcile these admirable sentiments 
with the universal goodness of God. And they explain 
why Dr. Johnson placed "Hartley's Observations," a 
Universalist work, next to the Bible. He told Bos- 
well, "Some of the texts of Scripture, on this subject, 



64 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

are as you observe, indeed strong, but they may admit 
of a mitigated construction." These facts interpret, 
his immortal lines : 

O thou whose power o'er moving worlds presides, 
"Whose voice created and whose wisdom guides, 
On darkling man in pure effulgence shine, 
And clear the clouded mind with light divine. 
'Tis thine alone to calm the pious breast, 
With silent confidence and holy rest ; 
From thee alone we spring, to thee we tend, 
Path, motive, guide, original and end ! 



(feurgs JWawfcfcmttfc— A. D. 1710-1780. 

George A. Stonehouse, fellow of Oxford with the 
Wesleys, in "Universal Kestitution Further Defended,"" 
says : 

• We understand the Scriptures as affirming that not only 
all men, but also all creatures that are in this world are pur- 
posed of God to be subordinated or restored by our common 
creator. 



%$nn faopte* T|mt$$&M + — A. D. 1712-1778. 

The great French genius thus writes : 

I now plainly see that an intolerant spirit must by degrees- 
become obdurate. For what charity can be long preserved 
for those we think must inevitably be damned? To love 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 65 

them would be to hate God for punishing them. To act, 
then, on principles of humanity, we must take upon ourselves 
to condemn actions only, and not men. Let us not assume 
the horrible functions of devils. Let us not lightly throw 
open the gates of hell to our fellow creatures. Alas, if all those 
are destined to be eternally miserable who deceive them- 
selves, where is the mortal who can avoid it ? — Elouisa. 

The God I serve is a merciful being — a father whose 
goodness only affects me and surpasses all his other attributes. 
His power astonishes me ; his immensity confounds my ideas ; 
his justice — he has made man weak, and though he be just, he 
is merciful. An avenging God is the God of the wicked. I 
can neither fear him on my own account, nor pray for his 
vengeance to be exerted against any other. It is the God of 
peace, the God of goodness, I adore. I know, I feel, I am the 
work of his hands and trust to see him at the last day, such 
as he has manifested himself to my heart during my life. — 
Elouisa. 



\vtUvk i\t drat*— A. D. 1712-1788. 

The sympathies of the great Prussian can be gath- 
ered from a well known anecdote. Petitpierre, a min- 
ister of the National church, was complained of by 
other clergymen, for preaching universal salvation, 
and Frederic was asked to forbid him. He replied : 

Let the man alone, but since the Neuchatel ministers 
desire to be damned eternally, let him not prevent them. 
They have entire liberty. 

5 



66 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

©jpote Jmrnrf*— A. D. 1720-1793. 

The great French genius, Charles Bonnet, in his 
"Philosophic Pangenesis," expresses this truth: 

The progress that we shall have made here below in 
knowledge and virtue will determine our point of departure in 
another life, and the place we shall occupy there. 



Ifstmj JJnrafc^— A. D. 1720. 

This author was the associate of Pope, Swift, and 
Chatham. His "Fool of Quality" was published a 
century ago. Frequently, the Universalist theory 
glows with divine beauty in the picturesque sentiment 
of the then popular book. 

And thus, on the grand and final consummation, when 
every will shall be subdued to the will of good to all, our Jesus 
will take in hand the resigned chordage of our hearts, he will 
tune them as so many instruments, and will touch them with 
the finger of his own divine feelings. Then shall the wisdom, 
the might, the goodness of our God, become the wisdom, 
might and goodness of all his intelligent creatures ; the happi- 
ness of each shall multiply and overflow in the wishes and 
participation of the happiness of all ; the universe shall begin 
to sound with the song of congratulation, and all voices shall 
break forth in an eternal hallelujah of paise transcending 
praise, and glory transcending glory, to God and the Lamb. 



ftarfc JObttsft^— A. D. 1721-1770. 

From the "Pleasures of the Imagination, " one of 
the purest poems ever written, we extract : 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 67 

From the birth 
Of mortal man, the sovereign maker said 
That not in humble, nor in brief delight,— 
Not in the fading glories of renown, 
Power's purple robes, nor pleasure's flowery lap, 
The soul should find enjoyment, but from these 
Turning disdainful to an equal good, 
Thro' all the ascent of things enlarge her view, 
Till every bound at length should disappear, 
And infinite perfection close the scene ! 



gmmmwrf %mA— A. D. 1724-1804. 

In his "End of all Things," after objecting to end- 
less damnation, as a "dual system," he says : 

Why were a few, or a single one, made at all, if only to 
exist in order to be made eternally miserable, which is infin- 
itely worse than non-existence ? 



jtra$ 8*rafcriwrmt$ — A. D. 1727-1788. 

When Gainesborough, the great painter, and the 
hating and hated rival of Vandyke, was dying, he 
cried out : 

We are all going to heaven, and Vandyke is of the party. 



UpHram dxrutp^— A. D. 1731-1800. 

It is not pretended that poor Cowper saw God 
as he is, and his beneficent dealings with men as they 



68 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

are. His heart was broken, his mind was shattered, 
and his whole existence was under a pall of gloom, in 
consequence of his conviction that God was a mon- 
ster, and eternity a calamity to countless millions of 
immortal souls. But it must be that once, at least, 
there was a rift in the clouds, and that the beautiful 
gates were ajar even to his tear-blinded eyes, when 
he wrote : 

God moves in a mysterious way 

His wonders to perform : 
He plants his footsteps in the sea 

And rides upon the storm. 
Deep in unfathomable mines 

Of never-failing skill, 
He treasures up his bright designs, 

And works his sovereign will. 

His purposes will ripen fast, 

Unfolding every hour ; 
The bud may have a bitter taste, 

But sweet will be the flower. 
Blind unbelief is sure to err, 

And scan his work in vain, 
God is his own interpreter, 

And he will make it plain. 

Had Cowper realized the sublime philosophy of 
this poem, he would have found sweet solace where 
he experienced life-long agony, in the contemplation 
of the character and dealings of God. And certainly 
in his sane moments he rose to the altitude of the 
genuine faith, as toward the close of Book VI of "The 
Task:" 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Thus heavenward all things tend. For all were once 
Perfect, and all must be at length restored. 
So God has greatly purposed, who would else 
In his dishonored works himself endure 
Dishonor, and be wronged without redress. 



mm Istfcmv— A. D. 1732-1804. 



The great French financier, and father of Madame 
de Stael, says : 

Eternal punishment! Power Almighty! can they who 
entertain such an idea know thee ? Thy goodness precedeth 
our birth, it still subsists after we are cut off by the hand of 
death. 



gfy gosg$ ftfcsftai — A. D. 1733-1804. 

This distinguished scholar and genius, the day 
before he died, desired his son to reach him a pam- 
phlet, — John Simpson's work against eternal punish- 
ment. He then remarked : 

It will be a source of great satisfaction to you to read this 
pamphlet. It contains my sentiments, and a belief in them 
will be a support to you in the most trying circumstances, as 
it has been to me. We shall all meet finally ; we only require 
different degrees of discipline, suited to our different tempers, 
to prepare us for final happiness. * * We shall all meet again, 
in another and a better world. 



70 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

%nmtp JM%— A. D. 1735-1803. 

Beattie, the once famous poet, sings : 

Shall I be left abandoned in the dust, 

When Fate, relenting, lets the flowers revive? 

Shall Nature's voice, to man alone unjust, 

Bid him, though doomed to perish, hope to live ? 

Is it for this fair virtue we must strive 

With disappointment, penury and pain ? 

No ! heaven's immortal Spring shall yet arrive, 

And man's majestic beauty bloom again, 

Bright through th' eternal year of Love's triumphant reign. 



%fommfc iiiuijr JsMtpwrq.— A. D. 1740-1790. 

This eloquent Swiss clergyman's "Plan of God 
with Respect to Man, " is entirely devoted to the advo- 
cacy of the final redemption of all. The reader is 
referred to his work, one of the Universalist classics. 



gtmg pilmg — A. D. 1740-1817. 

The famous mystic declares : 

Not a single soul will be lost, they will all — all be saved at 
last. The Holy Scriptures do not in one instance say the con- 
trary, and they cannot say it, and if it even seems so, we then 
must choose the most reasonable construction. But they do 
not even seem to say it, for all the passages wherewith some 
are essaying to prove the infinity of hell torments, prove noth- 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 71 

ing further than that they shall continue a long, undefined 
time. The Hebrew word olam, and the Greek aionios, 
which Luther has translated by ewig (eternal), signify nowhere 
an infinite, but a very long, an indefinite time. 



ftrifftt Tlrrifcrisk «b#u— A. D. 1740-1826. 

•Fronithe model village pastor, and world-renowned 
philanthropist, we have no quotations to present, but 
we can say, on the authority of his biography, trans- 
lated by Halsey, that the belief in universal salvation 
animated this remarkable man, and was the spur of 
his benevolence. His biographer says : 

It may here be considered necessary, for the sake of 
biographical clearness, to observe that upon some points he cer- 
tainly held very fanciful, and unwarranted notions, more par- 
ticularly upon those relative to a future state. He seemed to 
hope that the passage I. Cor. xv : 28, where it is said that "all 
things" shall be subjected unto the Almighty, and the Son 
also himself shall be subjected, "that God may be all in all," 
might include not only the little flock of Christ's immediate 
followers, but ultimately, at some almost indefinite period, 
through the boundless mercy of God, and the blood of Jesus, 
which was shed for the sins of the whole word, all the race of 
mankind. And he was strengthened in this belief by under- 
standing in another than the ordinary sense, that "as in Adam 
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." It is need- 
less to say of these doctrines that they are fanciful and mis- 
taken, etc. 

An adequate biography of this great man has 
never been written. If it shall ever appear, we ven- 



72 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

ture to prophesy that his discourses will reveal the 
fact that his faith in universal good inspired him to 
labor as he did, that he might accelerate the consum- 
mation he anticipated. 



Mrs. Cockburn (pronounced Coburn), a well known 
authoress, who wrote one of the versions of "The 
•Flowers of the Forest," a most excellent woman, and 
an accomplished leader of society in Edinburgh in the 
last century, in a letter to Lady Anne Barnard, author 
of "Auld Eobin Gray," says : 

The almighty maker of souls has various methods of 
restoring them to the divine image ; it is impossible his power 
can fail ; it is impossible for his image to be entirely obliterated ; 
it is impossible that misery, sin, and discord can be eternal ! 
Look, then, on the erring sons of men as on wretched prisoners 
bound in fetters for a time ; but recollect that they are and 
must be eternal as well as you, and that in the endless ages of 
eternity they will be restored to order. This faith, which is 
sincerely mine, makes me see things in very different lights 
from what others do, and perhaps is the key to my whole con- 
duct. Clean and unclean are welcome to my pity ; I know 
that with all our thousand errors flesh is heir to, we will one 
day be all right. 

Sir Walter Scott says of this friend of Hume, 
Mackenzie, and Lord Lindsay : — "Her active benevo- 
lence kept pace with her genius, and rendered her 
equally an object of love and admiration." 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 73 

%t$nmt %nsp& ^matter — A. D. 1741-1801. 

Johann Kasper Lavater, the great Swiss, uttered 

the following evangelical aspiration : 

• 

My prayers were comprehensive. My family, my friends, 
my fellow-citizens, my enemies, all Christians, all men were 
included in them. I flew to the most distant seas ; I pene- 
trated into the deepest mines and dungeons. I embraced in 
my heart all that is called man, present and future times and 
nations; the dead, the damned, yea, Satan himself ; I presented 
them all to God, with the warmest wishes that he would have 
mercy upon all. 

It is enough, my creator, that thou art love. Love seeketh 
not her own ; thou seeketh the happiness of all, and shouldest 
thou not then find what thou seekest ? 



Jtmn yitiiiin garfmnfo.— 1743-1825. 

This most amiable and talented writer, who lived 
"to the ripe age of 82, was full of the impartial Gospel. 
It was her open profession, and inward faith. Leigh 
Hunt, who knew her well, declares the fact. She says, 
among other things : 

No one who embraces the common idea of future tor- 
ments, together with the doctrine of election and reproba- 
tion, the insufficiency of virtue to escape the wrath of God, 
and the strange absurdity which, it should seem, through 
-similarity of sound alone, has been admitted as an axiom, 
that sins committed against an infinite being, do therefore 
deserve infinite punishment, no one, I will venture to assert, 
can believe such tenets, and have them often in his thoughts, 



74: A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

and yet be cheerful. The God of the Assembly's Catechism, 
is not the same God with the Deity of Thomson's Seasons. 
We often boast, and with reason, of the purity of our religion, 
as opposed to the grossness of the theology of the Greeks and 
Komans ; but we should remember that cruelty is as much 
worse than licentiousness, as a Moloch is worse than a satyr. 

The age which has demolished dungeons, rejected tor- 
ture, and given so fair a prospect of abolishing the iniquity 
of the slave trade, cannot long retain among its articles of 
belief, the heart-withering perspective of cruel and never- 
ending punishments. 



Jatptmm \ttsf}.—A.. D. 1745-1813. 

The eminent Dr. Bush, who was a firm friend of 
Elhanan Winchester, in a letter dated May 11, 1791, 
wrote to Winchester, then in London : 

The universal doctrine prevails more and more in our 
country, particularly among persons eminent for their piety, 
in whom it is not a mere speculation, but a new principle of 
action in the heart, prompting to practical goodness. 

If Christ died for all, as Mr. Wesley taught, it will soon 
appear a necessary consequence, that all shall be saved. * * * 
The benevolent spirit which has lately appeared in the world, 
in its governments, in its numerous philanthropic and humane 
societies, and even in public entertainments, reminds me of the 
first efforts of a child to move its body, or limbs. These 
efforts are strong, but irregular, and often in a contrary direc- 
tion to that which is intended. * * * At present we wish 
liberty to the whole world, but the next touch of the celestial 
magnet upon the human heart will direct it into wishes for 
the salvation of all mankind. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 75 

%Opt yrior JWfiit, W.J.— A. D. 1747-1817. 

"An elegant scholar, " says the Monthly Review, 
and voluminous writer on moral philosophy, thus 
records his sentiments : 

It certainly argues a greater degree of benevolence in the 
governor of the world, after the punishment of his creatures, 
to restore them to his favor, than either to preserve them in 
misery, or to blot them out of existence. * * * * To a belief 
in the doctrine of the eternity of hell torments, I impute more 
absurdity, more misery, and more un-Christian conduct, than to 
all other false opinions put together. It is impossible that a 
mind of any benevolence should be able to look round on a 
race of beings, to whom it is connected by nearest ties, the 
greater part of whom are doomed to eternal misery, without 
feeling existence itself insupportable. The effects of this 
doctrine, when a person applies it to himself, are gloom and 
despair, often terminating in mental derangement ; when he 
applies it to others, pride, cruelty, hatred, and all the worst 
passions of human nature. * * * 

The firm belief in the doctrine of final universal restora- 
tion, has afforded much consolation to myself during a large 
portion of my lif e ; has rendered advanced years placid and 
serene, and enables me to contemplate death itself, notwith- 
standing its gloomy appearance, as one of the most essential 
blessings of the whole plan of Providence. 

I would as a friend, advise every one to take this subject 
into his most serious consideration. I would wish him to 
experience during the remainder of his life, all the happiness 
which results from the full persuasion of this delightful doc- 
trine. I pray to God that others may experience that per- 
petual sunshine of the mind, that superiority of the passing 
events of this ever- varying scene, that universal philanthropy, 
that joy in the divine administration, that serenity through 



76 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

life, and that cheering prospect in the hour of death, which 
the belief in this doctrine does so manifestly inspire. 



This gentleman was editor of the "Bemembran- 
cer, " which appeared in five volumes ; one of the most 
respectable citizens of Philadelphia, who died in 1797. 
He was on friendly and confidential terms with many 
leading men in the Continental Congress, and was a 
man of deep religious feeling. The following extract 
from his will shows what were his religious opinions : 

He (Jesus) will, in the ages to come, put an end to sin, 
finish transgression, and bring in everlasting life unto all 
lapsed beings, as it stands recorded in the scriptures. 

He was a member of the Society of Friends, but in 
consequence of his views on the lawfulness of defen- 
sive warfare, he was expelled. He offered to pay sixty 
guineas toward the expense of printing a new edition 
of the "World Unmasked" and Paul Siegvolk's "Ever- 
lasting Gospel" — Universalist publications. 



jtomql fnv^— A. D. 1747-1825. 

The wise Parr, a man of great learning and wis- 
dom, and the spiritual adviser of Queen Caroline, was 
a Universalist. His biographer, Eev. Wm. Field, says : 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 77 

Several of Dr. Parr's friends will recollect a long, learned 
and elaborate sermon delivered by him in Hatton Church, on 
Good Friday, 1822, in which he traversed the whole field of 
theological controversy and decided almost all the great lead- 
ing points against the dicta of modern orthodoxy. He par- 
ticularly discussed Christian reconciliation ; stated and asserted 
his own view of it ; and exposed and impugned the high sat- 
isfaction scheme with all the strange notions connected with 
it — such as infinite offenses committed by finite creatures, inex- 
orable justice; vicarious punishment, imputed guilt and 
imputed righteousness. * * * * * 

With most divines, he held the doctrine of different 
degrees of future rewards and punishments, proportioned to the 
merits or demerits of every individual character, but in oppo- 
sition to the prevailing notions, he contended * * that 
future ^punishments are properly corrections, intended and 
fitted to produce moral reformation in the sufferer ; and to 
prepare ultimately for the gradual attainment of greater or 
less degrees of happiness. 



$♦ % <te%*— A. D. 1749-1832. 

Says the New Quarterly Magazine, "As the politi- 
cians accused Goethe of want of patriotism, because 
his mind soared above the mists of party feeling and 
international jealousies, so theologians charged him 
with irreligion and unbelief because he denounced 
priestcraft in whatever form it appeared, and refused 
to sacrifice his right of judgment to the arbitrary dicta 
of rival churches." He says : 

I ever believed in God and nature, and in the victory of 
good over evil, but this was not enough for the pious souls. I 



78 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

must also believe that three are one, and that one is three, and 
this the truthfulness of my soul rebels against, nor do I see 
what possible help it would be to me. * * * At seventy- 
five years of age one cannot but think of death sometimes. 
The thought leaves me perfectly at peace, for I entertain a 
firm conviction that man's spirit is an essence of an indestruct- 
ible nature, working on from eternity to eternity. It is like 
the sun, that to human eyes appears to go down, but which 
does not go down, but shines on forever. * * Man believes 
in immortality ; he has a right to the belief, for it is in accord 
with his nature, and he may, if he will, rest this belief on 
religious teachings ; but for a philosopher to attempt to argue 
the immortality of the soul from a legend, would be weak and 
come to nothing. My own conviction of a continuous exist- 
ence springs from my consciousness of personal energy, for I 
work incessantly to the end. Nature is bound to assign to 
me another outward form of being as soon as my present one 
can no longer serve my spirit. 



Vfpmm Jrf^mtt— A. D. 1750-1829. 

The eternity of hell-torments is a doctrine from which 
Christianity revolts ; to which it gives not the slightest coun- 
tenance ; and of which there is not the slightest trace either 
in the Old Testament or the New. * * * I will ven- 
ture to affirm that there is not in the whole voluminous 
code of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, from the begin- 
ning of Genesis to the end of Kevelation, one single passage, 
one solitary text, in which the doctrine is taught. I will add, 
that there is not a single sentence in which the very idea of a 
human individual existing through eternity in a state of tor- 
ment is even expressed distinctly and unequivocally. 

If the main design of punishment be to reclaim the offen- 
der to virtue and happiness, this grand difficulty (endless mis- 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 79 

ery) is removed. We see the triumph of benevolence in 
restoring the dead transgressor to life ; in visiting him with 
suffering in exact proportion to the greatness of his offences 
and the inveteracy of his vicious habits ; and finally, in his 
ultimate purification from moral stain, and his restoration to 
virtue, to happiness, and to God. This is indeed a result infin- 
itely worthy of infinite benevolence ; it clears up at once all 
the difficulties of the divine dispensations ; all the mysteries 
of the divine government ; and the belief of it fills the pious 
and contemplative mind with unspeakable satisfaction and 
delight. * * * 



We regard the doctrine of endless punishment as so utterly 
incompatible both with the goodness and justice of God, 
that we think it ought not to be received upon any evidence 
whatever. To affirm that the Almighty will render any of his 
creatures miserable to all eternity, and especially, when these 
creatures, like mankind, are frail and ignorant, and exposed to 
numerous temptations, is but saying in other words, that lie is 
neither merciful nor just : and to such a doctrine what evi- 
dence ought to obtain an assent ? It can scarcely be repro- 
bated in terms sufficiently strong. 



§mm flrafcfy— A. D. 1754-1832. 

The eminent poet of "the short and simple annals 
of the poor," an Episcopal clergyman, was a Univer- 
salist. His heart and head outran his narrow creed. 
He said, long before his death : 



80 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

We have, it seems, who teach, and doubtless well* 
Of a chastening, not awarding hell ; 
Who are assured that an offended God 
Will cease to use the thunder and the rod ; 
A soul on earth, by crime and folly stained, 
When here corrected has improvement gained; 
In other state still more improved to grow, 
And nobler powers in happier world to know ; 
New strength to use in each divine employ, 
And, more enjoying, looking to more joy. 

A pleasing vision ! could we thus be sure 

Polluted souls would be at length so pure ; 

The view is happy, we may think is just, 

It may be true — but who shall add it must? 

To the plain words and sense of Sacred Writ, 

With all my heart I reverently submit ; 

But where it leaves me doubtful, I'm afraid 

To call conjecture to my reason's aid; 

Thy thoughts, thy ways, great God ! are not as mine, 

And to thy mercy I my soul resign. 

Dr. T. Southwood Smith says : 

I have a letter from a son of Crabbe, informing me that 
my treatise was his father's daily companion in the close of 
life, and that the poet declared on his death bed, that he had 
received more solace from that book than from all other 
human compositions. 

The book referred to is one of the best expositions 
of Universalism ever written, ' 'Illustration of Divine 
Government." 



\nl$vi Jtttm— A. D. 1759-1796. 

This poet of nature, in many places on his undy- 
ing pages, has recorded his horror and detestation of 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 81 

popular error, and his ardent aspirations for the higher 
faith. Allan Cunningham says : — "To a love of human 
nature he (Burns) added an affection for the flowers of 
the valley, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field ; 
he acknowledgedthe tie of social sympathy which bound 
his heart to all created things, and carried his univer- 
sal good-w T ill so far as to entertain hopes of universal 
redemption, and the restoration of the doomed spirits 
to power and lustre." 

In harmony with the above sentiment he says : 

To give rny counsels all in one, 
Thy tuneful flame still careful fan ; 
Preserve the dignity of man 

With soul erect; 
And trust the universal plan 

Will all protect ! 

So again he says : 

Sure thou, Almighty, canst not act 
From cruelty or wrath ! 

Again : 

Where with intention I have erred, 

No other plea I have, 
But, thou art good ; and goodness still 

Delighteth to forgive ! 

None of his readers can be ignorant of his horror 
of what was and is so falsely styled evangelical relig- 
ion. For illustration : 

Ye'll get the best o' moral works, 
'Mang black Gentoos and Pagan Turks, 
Or hunters wild of Ponotaxi, 
6 



82 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Wha never heard of Orthodoxy. 

That he's the poor man's friend in need, 

The gentleman in word and deed, 

It's through no terror o' damnation ; 

It's just a carnal inclination. 

Morality ! thou deadly bane, 

Thy tens o'thousands thou hast slain ; 

Vain is his hope whose stay and truth is 

In moral mercy, truth, and justice, 

No ; stretch a point to catch a plack, 

Abuse a brother to his back, 

Be to the poor like onie whunstane, 

And haud their noses to the grunstane 

Ply every art o' legal thieving ; 

No matter ; stick to sound believing. 

Learn three-mile prayers, and half-mile graces, 

Wi' weel-spread looves, and lang, wry faces, 

Grunt up a solemn, lengthened groan, 

And damn a' parties but your own ; 

I'll warrant, then, ye're nae deceiver, 

A steady, sturdy, staunch believer ! 

In the same strain are "Holy Willie's Prayer," 
and the "Kirk's Alarm." Elsewhere, referring to popu- 
lar error, he says : 

Auld Orthodoxy lang did grapple, 
But now she's got an unco rapple, 
Haste, gie her name up i' the chapel, 

Nigh unto death ; 
See how she fetches at the thrapple, 

And gasps for breath. 

Enthusiasm's past redemption, 

Gaen in a galloping consumption ; 

Not all the quacks wi' a' their gumption, 

Will ever mend her ; 
Her feeble pulse gies strong presumption 

Death soon will end her. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 83 

He also wrote those beautiful lines ending with : 

No wanderer lost, 
A family in Heaven. 

Other verses accordant with the language ascribed 

to him by Cunningham, may be found. Thus : 

Lord, help me thro' this world o' care, 
I'm weary, sick o't, late and air, 
Not but I have a richer share 

Than many others ; 
But why should one man better fare, 
And all men brothers ? 
Again: 

Let me, oh Lord, from life retire, 
Unknown each guilty, worldy fire, 
Remorse's throb, or loose desire ; 

And when I die, 
Let me in this belief expire — 

To God I fly. 

The fear o' hell's a hangman's whip, 

To haud the wretch in order ; 
But where ye feel your honor grip, 

Let that aye be your border : 
Its slightest touches, iustant pause — 

Debar all side pretences ; 
And resolutely keep its laws, 

Uncaring consequences. 

His address to the Prince of Evil indicates his 
indulgence of the larger hope : 

O wad ye tak a thocht and men', 
Ye aiblins might, I dinna ken, 

Still hae a stake ; 
I'm loath to think upon yon den 

E'en for your sake. 



84 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Burns wrote in 1789 : 

I trust that in Jesus Christ shall "all the families of the 
earth be blessed," by being yet connected together in a better 
world, where every tie that bound heart to heart in this state 
of existence shall be far beyond our present conception, more 
enduring. 



I^mot ©. % mn jBtpfer*— A. D. 1759-1805. 

Goethe's great associate, and next to him the 
genius of German song, thus sings : 

We speak with the lip, and we dream in the soul 

Of some better and fairer day ; 
And our days, the meanwhile, to that golden goal, 

Are gliding and sliding away. 
Now the world becomes old, now again it is young, 

But "The Better" is ever the word on the tongue. 

At the threshold of life Hope leads us in 

Hope plays round the mirthful boy ; 
Though the best of its charms may with youth begin, 

Yet for age it reserves its toy. 
"When we sink at the grave, why the grave has scope, 

And over the coffin man planteth — Hope. 

And it is not a dream of fancy proud, 

With a fool for its dull begetter ; 
There's a voice aj: the heart which proclaims aloud, 

"We are born for something better!" 
And that voice of the heart, oh, ye may believe, 

Will never the hope of the soul deceive ! 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 85 

ftttsssm J>afl%— A. D. 1762-1851. 

This celebrated writer has left a few traces of her 
love for this benevolent faith. 

In "The Second Marriage, " Beaumont, a benevo- 
lent clergyman, replies to a disparaging remark by his 
wife on the step -mother : 

"Nay, my dear, you are prejudiced and severe. She has 
an ungracious countenance, to be sure, but now and then, 
when it relaxes, she looks as if she had some good in her. 

Mrs. B. Yes, Charles, you find always some good in 
every one of God's creatures. 

Mr. B. And there is some good in every one of God's 
creatures, if you would but look for it. 

In another place the sentiment is repeated : 

Mrs. B. Poo, Mr. Beaumont ! the wickedest creatxire 
on earth has always your good word for some precious quality 
or other. 

Mr. B. Well, my dear, and the wickedest creature in the 
world always has something about it that shows whose crea- 
ture it is, — that shows we were all meant for a good end — and 
that there is a seed — a springing place — a beginning for it, 
in everybody. 

In "The Election," a comedy, Baltimore saves the 
life of a hated rival, Freeman, under strong tempta- 
tions to leave him to perish ; whereupon, Mrs. Balti- 
more, on hearing it, exclaims : 

Thy master — ay, and my husband! and God Almighty's 
good creature, who has formed everything good ! Oh, yes, 
he has made every being with good in it, and will at last make 
everything perfectly so, in some way or other, known only to 
his wisdom ! 



86 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

jhmmtt '\*gm — A. D. 1763-1855. 

James Freeman Clarke, in his "Eleven Weeks in 
Europe, " describes an interview with Samuel Eogers, 
the banker poet, who recited passages from "Paradise 
Lost, " and said : 

Milton had put an argument into the mouth of Adam, 
complaining of his punishment, which he had not answered. 
"There's no answering that, indeed, except we admit that all 
punishment is corrective." 

This shows plainly what were the feelings of the 
author of "The Pleasures of Memory, "on this subject. 
[See Milton, page 35.] 



JKr %nm$ flmfcrntafc.— A. D. 1765-1832. 

The ablest of England's scholars, Sir James Mack- 
intosh, wrote, — see "Life by his Son" : 

The fear of hell or the desire of reward for ourselves, 
may, like the fear of the gallows, prevent crimes ; but at most 
it can only lead to virtue, it can never produce it. I leave 
below me those coarse notions of religion which degrade it 
into a supplement to police and criminal law. All such repre- 
sentations are more practically atheistical, more derogatory 
from the grandeur of religious sentiment, than any specu- 
lative system called atheism. 

There is nothing in this world so right as to cultivate 
and exercise kindness — the most certainly evangelical of all 
doctrines — the principle of Jesus Christ. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 87 

"These precepts, " says his biographer, "led him to 
look forward with ardent hope and humble faith to the 
day when tears shall be wiped from all eyes. " 



JOma&tr ann Ifmnfaftt.— A. D. 1767-1835. 

Humboldt, the great German scientist, declared : 

The conviction — arising from a firm confidence in 
Almighty goodness and justice — that death is only the termin- 
ation of an imperfect state of being, whose purpose cannot be 
fully carried out here, and that it is the passage to a better 
and a higher condition, should be so constantly present to us, 
that nothing should be able to obscure it, even for a moment ; 
it is the groundwork of inward peace, and of the loftiest 
endeavors, and is an inexhaustible spring of comfort in afflic- 
tion. 



Jferararf Wnt}tev 6<fefcp*— A. D. 1770-1834. 

Southey, the poet, having apologized for Wesley's 
theory of endless misery, Coleridge, the deepest, 
subtlest, and perhaps most wonderful mind England 
saw for a century, thus protested : 

Dear and honored Southey! All this is very plausible ; 
The picture is frightful, and a recoil is at first inevitable by 
any sane mind. But what have you to substitute, or, rather 
what had "Wesley, who still believed in everlasting (that is, 
endless) torments? for so he understood the word eternal. 



88 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

I boldly answer, and appeal to Taylor's letters on original sin, 
a mere paltry evasion; a quibble,, (and one that is quite 
absurd when applied to an omniscience and omnipotence per- 
petually creative,) between decreeing and permitting. If any 
one, it should be a Spanish theologian to treat on this sub- 
ject; for the Spaniards only combine depth with subtlety. I 
feel and I think as you do, Southey. How could it be other- 
wise ? In this only I differ, that the controversy is between 
Whitefield and Wesley, and men like them. And is it not fair 
to take the question abstractedly from the total creed of both 
parties ? Not simply, what is there in reprobation so horrible ? 
To this you have returned a fit answer. But what is there in 
it that Mr Wesley could with consistency affect horror at ? Let 
him turn the broad road round before it comes to the everlasting 
fire lake, and then he may reprobate reprobation as loudly as 
he lists. 

This great philosopher, metaphysician and poet, 
never assented to that gross caricature of God whom 
he called in derision 



That Deity, Accomplice Deity, 



who, 



In the fierce jealousy of awakened wrath 
Will go forth with our armies, and oar fleets, 
To scatter the red ruin on their foes. 
O Blasphemy ! To mingle fiendish deeds 
With blessedness. 

His soul was cheered with the sublime thought 

There is one Mind, one omnipresent mind, 
Omnific. His most holy name is Love. 
Truth of subliming import ! with the which 
Who feeds and saturates his constant soul, 
He from his small, particular orbit flies 
With bless'd outstarting. From himself he flies, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 89 

Stands in the Sun, and with no partial gaze 
Views all creation ; and he loves it all, 
And blesses it, and calls it very good ! 
This is indeed to dwell with the Most High ! 
Cherubs and rapture-trembling seraphim 
Can pass no nearer to the Almighty Throne. 

'Tis the sublime of man, 
Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves 
Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole ! 
This fraternizes man, this constitutes 
Our charities and bearings. But 'tis God 
Diffused through all, that doth make all one whole. 

He expresses the same idea in other words : 

He prayeth well, who loveth well, 
Both man, and bird, and beast. 
He prayeth best, who loveth best 
All things, both great and small, 
For the dear God who loveth us ; 
He made and loveth all. 

It was the confidence caused by such thoughts 
£hat enabled him to pen the most beautiful descrip- 
tion of silent prayer that ever was written : 

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay, 

It hath not been my use to pray 

With moving lips, or bended knees ; 

But silently, by slow degrees, 

My spirit I to love compose, 

In humble trust mine eyelids close, 

"With reverential resignation, 

No wish conceived, no thought express'd ! 

Only a sense of supplication, 

A sense o'er all my soul impress'd 

That I am weak, yet not unblest, 

Since in me, round me, everywhere, 

Eternal strength and wisdoin are. 



90 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

His faith relating to the future he expresses in this 
sublime passage : 

Believe thou, O my soul 
Life is a vision shadowy of truth : 
And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave, 
Shapes of a dream. The veiling clouds retire, 
And lo ! the Throne of the Bedeeming God, 
Forth flashing unimaginable day, 
Wraps in one blaze, earth, heaven, and deepest hell ! 

Crabb Eobinson in his diary, 1836, says : 

On a visit to Cottle, I was shown a letter by Coleridge 
on the future state, with a strong bearing against the idea of 
eternal suffering. 



|4» Haste.— A. D * 1770-1843. 

The celebrated English essayist and Baptist theo- 
logian was a good example to modern Baptists. In 
a "Letter to a Young Clergyman," he writes : 

But endless punishment ! hopeless misery, through a dur- 
ation to which the enormous terms above imagined will be 
absolutely nothing ! I acknowledge my inability (I would say it 
reverently) to admit this belief, together with a belief in the 
divine goodness — the belief that "God is love," that "his 
tender mercies are over all his works." 

But, after all this, we have to meet the grave question, 
"What say the Scriptures? There is a force in their expres- 
sion at which we well may tremble. On no allowable inter- 
pretation do they signify less than a very protracted duration 
and formidible severity. But I hope it is not presumption 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 91 

to take advantage of the fact that the terms everlasting, eter- 
nal, forever, original or translated, are often employed in the 
Bible, as well as other writings, under great and various limi- 
tations of import ; and are thus withdrawn from the predica- 
ment of necessarily and absolutely meaning a strictly endless 
duration. The limitation is often, indeed, plainly marked by 
the nature of the subject. In other instances the words are used 
with figurative indefiniteness, which leaves the limitations to be 
made by some general rule of reason and proportion. They are 
designed to magnify, to aggravate, rather than to define. My 
resource, in the present case, then, is simply this : that since 
the terms do not necessarily and absolutely signify an inter- 
minable duration — and since there is, in the present instance, 
to be pleaded for admitting a limited interpretation, a reason 
in the moral estimate of things, of stupendous, of infinite 
urgency, involving our conceptions of the divine goodness and 
equity, and leaving those conceptions overwhelmed in darkness 
and horror, if it be rejected, I therefore conclude that a limited 
interpretation is authorized. Perhaps there is some pertinence 
in the suggestion, which I recollect to have seen in some old 
and nearly unknown book in favor of universal restitution, 
that the great difference of degrees of future punishment, so 
plainly stated in Scripture, affords an argument against its 
perpetuity : since, if the demerit be infinite, there can be no 
place for a scale of degrees, apportioning a minor infliction to 
some offenders ; every one should be punished up to the utmost 
that his nature can sustain ; and the same reason of equity 
there may be for a limited measure, there may consistently be 
for a limited duration. The assignment for an unlimited 
duration would seem an abandonment of the principle of the 
discriminating rule observed in the adjustment of degrees. 

If it be asked, how could the doctrine have been more 
plainly and positively asserted than it is in the Scripture lan- 
guage, in answer I ask, how do we construct our words and 
sentences to express it in an absolute manner, so as to leave 
no possibility of misunderstanding doctrine, and yet, pressed to 



92 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

the strength of the Scripture language, have had recourse by 
a literal interpretation of a threatened destruction, to eter- 
nal death, as signifying annihilation of existence after a more 
or less protracted penal infliction. Even this would be a pro- 
digious relief ; but it is an admission that the terms in ques- 
tion do mean something final, in an absolute sense. I have 
not directed much thought to this point ; the grand object of 
interest being a negation of the perpetuity of misery. I have 
not been anxious for any satisfaction beyond that ; though cer- 
tainly one would wish to indulge the hope, founded on the 
divine attribute of infinite benevolence, that there will be a 
period somewhere in the endless futurity, when all God's sin- 
ning creatures will be restored by Mm to rectitude and happi- 
ness. 



HflHiam Uttteamrri^— A. D - 1770-1850. 

The most philosophical, and one of the greatest of 
English poets, shows us, that Christian "faith is the 
substance of things hoped for." 

As men from men 
Do, in the constitution of their souls, 
Differ, by mystery not to be explained ; 
And as we fall by various ways, and sink 
One deeper than another, self -condemned, 
Through manifold degrees of guilt and shame, 
So manifold and various are the ways 
Of restoration, fashioned to the steps 
Of all infirmity, and tending all 
To the same point, — attainable by all, — 
Peace in ourselves and union with our God. 

'Tis nature's law 
That none, the meanest of created things, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 93 

Of forms created the most vile and brute, 
The dullest or most noxious, should exist 
Divorced from good, — a spirit and pulse of good, 
A life and soul, to every mode of being 
Inseparably linked. Then be assured 
That least of all can aught that ever owned 
The heaven-regarding eye and front sublime 
Winch man is born to, — sink, howe'er depressed, 
So low as to be scorned without a sin ; 
Without offence to God cast out of view 
Like the dry remnant of a garden flower 
Whose seeds are shed, or as an implement 
Worn out and worthless. 

One adequate support 
For the calamities of mortal life 
Exists, one only ; — an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a being 
Of infinite benevolence and power, 
Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
All accidents, converting them to good. 

January 5, 1843, a walk with Wordsworth and Faber, Words- 
worth denied transubstantiation on grounds "on which," says 
Faber, "I should deny the Trinity." Wordsworth declared, in 
strong terms, Ins disbelief of eternal punishment, which Faber 
did not attempt to defend. — From Crabb Robinson's Diary. 



|^ JaJfat— A. D. 1771-1852* 

This eminent theologian was also a poet. 

In God's eternity 

There shall a day arise, 



94: A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

When all the race of man shall be 
With Jesus in the skies. 

As night before the rays 
Of morning flees away, 

Sin shall retire before the blaze 
Of God's eternal day. 

As music fills the grove 

When stormy clouds are past, 

Sweet anthems of redeeming love 
Shall all employ at last. 

Redeemed from death and sin 
Shall Adam's numerous race, 

A ceaseless song of praise begin, 
And shout redeeming grace. 



%*um Hmthjmtfcr^— A. D. 1771-1854. 

James Montgomery wrote a jubilate which we can 
not interpret in harmony with the doctrine that Christ 
shall be defeated. Can the reader ? 

Hark ! the song of jubilee, 

Loud as mighty thunders roar, 
Or the fullness of the sea, 

When it breaks upon the shore : — 
Hallelujah ! for the Lord 

God omnipotent shall reign ! 
Hallelujah ! let the word 

Echo round the earth and main. 

Hallelujah ! — hark ! the sound 

Heard thro' earth and through the skies, 

Wakes above, beneath, around, 
All creation's harmonies ; 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 95 

See Jehovah's banner furled, 

Sheathed his sword ; he speaks — 'tis done ! 
And the kingdoms of this world 

Are the kingdoms of his Son. 

He shall reign from pole to pole 

With illimitable sway ; 
He shall reign when, like a scroll, 

Yonder heavens are passed away; 
Then the end ; — beneath his rod 

Man's last enemy shall fall ; 
Hallelujah ! Christ in God, 

God in Christ, is all in all ! 

Again : 

O'er every foe victorious, 

He on his throne shall rest, 
From age to age more glorious, 

All blessing, and all blest, 
The tide of time shall never 

His covenant remove ; 
His name shall stand forever ; 

That name to us is Love. 

While we lay no claim to Montgomery, we do not 
know how universal salvation could be more clearly 
stated in rhyme. 



urns !«♦— A. D. 1772-1857. 



In January, 1833, Eev. A. C. Thomas held a con- 
versation with Dr. Dick, in the course of which the lat- 
ter said : 



96 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

I see not how the "universality and unchangeability of the 
first and great commandment can be admitted without imply- 
ing the final salvation of all mankind. 

In a letter to J. E. Miles, February 22, 1849, he 
wrote.: 

When I consider the boundless nature of eternity, and 
when I consider the limited nature of man, I can scarcely 
bring myself to believe that the sins of a few fleeting years 
are to be punished throughout a duration that has no end, 
more especially when it is declared more than a score of times 
that "the mercy of the Lord endureth forever," and that "his 
tender mercies are over all his works. " If his mercy endures 
forever, it appears scarcely consistent with the idea that pun- 
ishment will be inflicted throughout unlimited duration. * * I 
think it more consistent with the goodness of God to suppose 
that the punishments he inflicts upon the wicked are intended 
for their ultimate benefit ; and to prepare them for restoration 
to the happiness they had lost. 



fames I*©*— A. D. 1772-1835. 

The "Ettrick Shepherd" was among the most popu- 
lar of Scottish poets and authors three quarters of a 
a century ago. The "Pilgrims of the Sun" was writ- 
ten apparently to show that all souls are God's, that 
all punishment is disciplinary, and that at last all will 
achieve holiness. We present a passage, sent to us, 
and quoted from memory, by Eev. G. W. Lawrence : 

These grosser regions yield 
Souls thick as blossoms of the vernal field, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 97 

Who after death, in relative degree, 

Fairer or darker, as their lives may be, 

To other worlds are led to learn and strive, 

Till to perfection all at last arrive. 

This once conceived, the ways of God are plain, 

But thy unyielding race in error will remain, 

And would, presumptuous, the eternal bind 

Either perpetual blessings to bestow, 

Or plunge the souls he framed in endless woe. 

Nor more nor less, for the Almighty still 
Suits to our life the goodness and the ill. 



Safari jfeirijfs?— A. D. 177^-1843. 

The poet laureate of England has given this tes- 
timony : 

What though at birth we bring with us the seed 

Of sin, a mortal taint — in heart and will 

Too surely felt, too plainly shown in deed, 

Our fatal heritage ; yet are we still 

The children of the All-Merciful ; and ill 

They teach, who tell us that from hence must flow 

God's wrath, and then his justice to filfull, 

Death everlasting, never-ending woe ! 

O miserable lot of man, if it were so ! 

Falsely and impiously they teach, who thus 

Our Heavenly Father's holy will misread ! 

In bounty hath the Lord created us, 

In love redeemed. From this authentic creed 

Let no bewildering sophistry impede 

The heart's entire assent, for God is good : 

Hold firm this faith, and in whatever need, 



98 A CLOUD OF WITNESTES. 

Doubt not but thou wilt find thy soul endued 
With all-sufficient strength of heavenly fortitude. 

In the "Life of Wesley" he refers to a controversy 
which had taken place between the great champion of 
Arminianism and the Calvinist, Whitefield. The lat- 
ter wrote to Wesley : 

I am sorry, honored sir, to hear, by many letters, that you 
seem to own a sinless perfection in this life attainable. I 
think I cannot answer you better than a venerable minister of 
these parts answered a Quaker : — "Bring me a man that has 
really arrived at this, and I will pay his expenses, let him 
come from whence he will." Besides, dear sir, what a fond 
conceit is it to cry up perfection, and yet to cry down the doc- 
trine of final perseverance. But this, and many other absurd- 
ities, you will run into, because you will not own election ; and 
you will not own election, because you cannot own it without 
believing in reprobation. What, then, is there in reprobation 
so horrid ? 

In the biography, Southey is sufficiently explicit 
in reference to Calvinism. Taken in connection with 
the first quotation, it gives us Southey's estimate of 
that sum of all monstrosities : 

That question might have been easily answered. The 
doctrine implies that an almighty and all-wise Creator has 
called into existence the greater part of the human race, to 
the end that, after a short, sinful, and miserable life, they 
should pass into an eternity of inconceivable torments, it 
being the pleasure of their Creator that they should not be 
able to obey his commands, and yet incur the penalty of ever- 
lasting damnation for disobedience. In the words of Mr. 
Wesley, who has stated the case with equal force and truth, 
"The sum of all this is, one in twenty, suppose, of mankind 
are elected, nineteen in twenty are reprobated." The elect 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 99 

shall be saved, do what they will; the reprobate shall be 
damned, do what they can. This is the doctrine of Calvinism, 
for which diabolism would be a better name ; and in the worst 
and bloodiest idolatry that ever defiled the earth, there is 
nothing so horrid, so monstrous, so impious as this. 



Here we see 
The water at its well-head ; clear it is, 
Not more transpicuous the invisible air ; 
Pure as an infant's thoughts ; and here to life 
And good directed all its uses serve. 
The herb grows greener on its brink ; sweet flowers 
Bend o'er the stream that feeds their freshened roots : 
The redbreast loves it for his wintry haunts, 
And, when the buds begin to open forth, 
Builds near it, with his mate, their brooding nest ; 
The thirsty stag with widening nostrils there 
Invigorated draws his copious draught ; 
And there amid its flags the wild-boar stands, 
Nor suffering wrong nor meditating hurt. 
Through woodlands wide and solitary fields 
Unsullied thus it holds its bounteous course ; 
But when it reaches the resorts of men, 
The service of the city there defiles 
The tainted stream ; corrupt and foul it flows 
Through loathsome banks and o'er a bed impure, 
Till in the sea, the appointed end to which 
Through all its way it hastens, 'tis received, 
And, losing all pollution, mingles there 
In the wide world of waters. So is it 
With the great stream of tilings, if all were seen ; 
Good the beginning, good the end shall be, 
And transitory evil only makes 
The good end happier. Ages pass away, 
Thrones fall, and nations disappear, and worlds 
Grow old and go to wreck ; the soul alone 



100 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Endures, and what she chooseth for herself, 
The arbiter of her own destiny, 
That only shall be permanent. 

Henry Crabb Robinson says in his Diary, "Mr. Gur- 
ney read me some letters from Southey. In one writ- 
ten in 1826, Southey thus expressed himself:" 

I cannot believe in an eternity of hell. I hope God will 
forgive me if I err; but in this matter I cannot say, "Lord, help 
my unbelief." (See the same opinion in a "Tale of Paraguay,'' 
Canto II, verses 15, 16, 17.) 



% JL fit$mrnmt$$v — A. D. 1768-1834. 

The great Berlin professor writes : 

The figurative language of Christ has led men to accept 
over against the doctrine of eternal blessedness, that of a state 
of unabatable misery for those who die out of fellowship with 
Christ ; but this language will be found hardly sufficient for 
such a conclusion if we examine it more closely. (Matt, xxv : 46 ; 
Mark ix : 44 ; John v : 20.) These passages for one thing can only 
by very arbitrary treatment be separated from others which 
of necessity point to something previous, Further, other 
passages stand over against them which do not allow us to 
think of a definitive victory of evil over a part of the human 
race, which rather oblige us to conclude thit even before the 
general resurrection, evil shall be wholly destroyed. (Comp. 
Matt, xiv : 30-34 and John v : 24-15, 1. Cor. xv : 26.) Still less can 
the idea of an eternal damnation, whether considered in and 
by itself, or in reference to eternal blessedness, bear close 
examination. For if "one but reflects that by eternal damna- 
tion there cannot be understood condemnation to bodily pain 
and suffering, since, unless human nature is to be wholly des- 
troyed, we cannot think away the mitigating power of habit, 
and if one farther reflects that even the consciousness of being 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 101 

able to bear what is imposed brings with it a certain satisfac- 
tion, one will find it impossible to deduce the conception of a 
pure misery susceptible of no abatement ; and so there scarcely 
remains a bit of firm ground to stand upon. If we suppose 
the misery to pertain to the soul, and to consist chiefly in the 
pangs of conscience, then the damned would be much better 
in damnation than they were in this life, and so would be = 
more miserable because of being better. This we cannot 
conceive, for even if this were consistent with divine right- 
eousness, still there would be nothing to hinder the self- 
approbation of the awakened and sensitive conscience from 
forming a counterbalance to the misery ; yea, we cannot con- 
ceive that the awakened conscience as a living inward move- 
ment should not even produce something good. Should it be 
said in reply that it is not the sensitiveness of conscience to 
the contrast between good and evil that is to be regarded as 
the source of eternal suffering, but solely the thought of 
despised blessedness : still even this could only be a living 
thing in so far as the blessedness is at least conceived of in 
the consciousness, and could only be tormenting in so far as a 
capability may still exist to take part in that blessed condi- 
tion. But this capability implies a bettering, and that con- 
ception of blessedness would be an enjoyment lessening the 
misery. Let us consider now eternal damnation in reference 
to eternal blessedness. It is easy to see that the existence of 
the latter is incompatible with that of the former. For 
although the two domains are outwardly quite separate, yet a 
state of blessedness in itself so elevated is incompatible with 
a complete ignorance of the misery of others, all the more 
when the separation itself is the result of a general judgment 
at which both divisions were present — each aware of the other's 
presence. If, then, we attribute to the blessed a knowledge of 
the condition of the damned, this knowledge cannot be con- 
ceived as destitute of sympathy. For sympathy, unless the 
perfecting of our nature is to be retrogressive, must embrace 
the whole human race, and sympathy for the damned must 
necessarily trouble blessedness all the more that it will not, 
like every similar feeling in this life, be tempered by hope. 



102 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

For however much we may reflect that if damnation is eternal 
it must be right that it should be so, and that when we see 
God we shall see also the righteousness of God, such reflec- 
tion can never destroy sympathy, since even here we rightly 
require a deeper sympathy for deserved than for undeserved 
suffering. But if to our future existence there belongs in any 
form at all the recollection of that previous condition in which 
some of us were always associated with some of them in ordin- 
ary life, then must the sympathy be so much the stronger, as 
in that space of time there was a period when we were as 
little renewed as they. For since in God's government of the 
world all things are inseparably mixed, we shall not be able to 
hide from ourselves the fact that the arrangements that were 
so helpful to us were determined by that same world-plan, in 
which no similar advantages were assigned to them. Our 
sympathy, therefore, must have this further poignant element 
which can never be awanting when we become aware of the 
connection between our benefit and another's injury. 

Looked at, then, from either side, there are great difficul- 
ties in the way of conceiving the final result of redemption to 
be, that some shall be partakers of the highest blessedness, but 
that others, and these according to the common conception 
the greater part of the human race, shall be lost in irretrieva- 
ble misery. Therefore we should not hold such a conception, 
without proof that Christ himself foresaw this issue — proof of 
such decisive character as we certainly are not in possession 
of. Hence we may at the least put in an equal claim on behalf 
of that milder view that through the power of redemption a 
general restoration of all human souls shall at some time be 
accomplished. — Der Christliche Glaube, II. 503. 



Paul Chatfield, the author of "The Tin Trumpet, 
or Heads and Tails for the Wise and Waggish, a new 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 103 

American edition, with alterations and additions, New 
York : D. Appleton & Co., 1 859, " says : 

Futurity — what we are to be, determined by what we 
have been. An inscrutable mystery, of which we can only 
guess at a solution, by referring to the past and present. 
These assure us, by millions of incontestible proofs, that the 
benevolent Creator sympathizes with our happiness; then he 
must sympathize more tenderly with our sufferings. To sup- 
pose that he would scatter all sorts of delights around us in 
this evanescent world, and yet doom the great mass of man- 
kind to everlasting anguish in the next, is an irreconcilable 
contradiction. The earth, upon which we are merely flitting 
passengers, is everywhere enameled with flowers, equally 
exquisite for varied beauty and perfume, but useless, except for 
the purpose of diffusing pleasure ; and yet our eternal abode is 
to be horrent with fire and agony ! The best way of combatting 
the terrors with which superstition has darkened futurity, is 
to appeal from the unknown to the known — from the unseen 
to the visible — from imaginary torment to real enjoyment — 
from the frightfulness and stench of Tophet to the beauty of 
a tulip, and the fragrance of a rose. 

Optimism— a devout conviction that, under the govern- 
ment of a benevolent and all-powerful God, everything con- 
duces ultimately to the best, in the world he has created; and 
that mankind, the constant objects of his paternal care, are in 
a perpetual state of improvement and increased happiness. 
This is a great and consoling principle, the summary of all 
religion and all philosophy, the reconciler of all misgivings, 
the source of all comfort and consolation. To believe in it, 
is to realize its truth, so far as we are individually concerned ; 
and, indeed, it will mainly depend upon ourselves, whether or 
not everything shall be for the best. Let us cling to the 
moral of Parnell's "Hermit," rather than suffer our confidence 
in the divine goodness to be staggered by the farcical exagger- 
ations of Voltaire's "Candide." If the theory of the former be a 
delusion, it is at least a delightful one ; and for my own part, 



104 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

— malim cumPlatone errare, quam cum allis recte sentire 
— where the error is of so consolatory and elevating a descrip- 
tion. An optimist may be wrong, but presumption and religion 
are in his favor; nor can we directly pronounce anything to 
be for final evil, until the end of all things has arrived, and 
the whole scheme of creation is revealed to us. Does not 
every architect complain of the injustice of criticising a build- 
ing before it is half finished ? Yet who can tell what volume 
of the creation we are in at present, or what point the structure 
of our moral fabric has attained ? "Whilst we are all in a ves- 
sel that is sailing under sealed orders, we shall do well to con- 
fide implicitly in our government and captain. 



If rftm Harm UpHmms* 

Crabb Robinson, in his Diary, mentions Helen 
Maria Williams, the aunt of Athanase Coquerel, as a 
Universalist. This fact enables us to "read between 
the lines, " and thus interpret her immortal lyric as 
the author intended it to be understood, "While Thee 
I Seek, Protecting Power." 



% % 1[atai + — A. D. 1773-1854. 

In the use of the Scripture argument the triumph is 
completely and most remarkably on the milder side. [See 
Coleridge, Wordsworth and Crabb Robinson, in this volume.] 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 105 

©fcarlss Jinmb.— A. D. 1775-1834. 

The good and gentle "Elia, " the immortal essay- 
ist and poet, embodies the popular idea of Satan, 
derived from Milton : 

Sabbathless Satan ! he who his unglad 
Task ever plies, 'mid rotary burnings, 
That round and round incalculably reel, — 
For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel, 
In that red realm, from which are no returnings, 
"Where toiling and turmoiling ever and aye, 
He and his thoughts keep pensive working day ! 

But he thus ignores it : 

Fancy, most licentious on such themes, 

Where decent reverence well had kept her mute, 

Hath o'erstocked hell with devils, and brought down 

By her enormous fablings and mad lies, 

Discredit on the Gospel's serious truths 

And salutary fears. The man of parts, 

Poet, or prose declaimer, on his couch 

Xiolling like one indifferent, fabricates 

A heaven of gold, where he, and such as he, 

Their heads encompassed with crowns, their heels 

With fine wings garlanded, shall tread the stars 

Beneath their feet, heaven's pavement, far removed 

From damned spirits, and the torturing cries 

Of men, his brethren, fashioned of the earth 

As he was, nourished with the self-same bread, 

Belike his kindred or companions once, 

Through everlasting ages now divorced, 

In chains and savage torments to repent 

Short years of folly upon earth. Their groans unheard 

In heaven, the saint nor pity feels, nor care 

For those thus sentenced, pity might disturb 



106 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

The delicate sense and most divine repose 
Of spirits angelical. Blessed be God, 
The measure of his judgments is not fixed 
By man's erroneous standard. He discerns 
No such inordinate difference and vast 
Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom 
Such disproportioned fates. 



||r$> f$ttrig II- JBfcjprcrofc— A. D. 1775-1851. 

This delightful authoress, in her day the most pop- 
ular who had ever written, developed the great idea, 
abundantly. Her works were in all the Sunday 
schools in England and America, and were acknowl- 
edged as the best of books, when the lynx-eyed cen- 
sors of the church began to see the tracks of heresy. 
At first they denied the genuineness of the books which 
held the idea of a final reconciliation, but at length 
the evidence could not be resisted, and she is now 
classed with "the sect everywhere spoken against." 
The "Monk of Cimies," "Henry Milner," "Shanty the 
Blacksmith, " and perhaps others, develop the great 
truth. Here is a passage from "Henry Milner" : 

Lord H then proceeded to remark, that there are no 

means of accounting for the ways of God with man, but by 
what Scripture in its truth tells us respecting the work of 
salvation by Christ. "When we do not add to or diminish 
from the words of Scripture, but take them as they are deliv- 
ered to us, then immediately such a light bursts upon us that 
we are no longer perplexed with the dealings of God with man. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 107 

Consider only two passages which tins moment occur to me : — 
'And lie is the propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours only, 
but also for the sins of the whole world.' 'But we see Jesus, 
who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering 
of death, crowned with glory and honor ; that he by the grace 
of God should taste death for every man.' Can words be 
plainer than these passages ? Is it not giving God the lie, then, 
to doubt his purposes toward man, and to assert, as some do, 
that he has made creatures to be eternally miserable ? Yet, " 
continues Lord H , "these are subjects of such infinite sol- 
emnity, that we cannot contemplate them with too much awe, 
and ought ever-to pray that we may not be permitted to decide 
lightly upon them, or to be suffered, in the opinions which we 
adopt respecting them, to lean upon our own understanding." 

"I do think so," replied Henry, "we cannot be too cautious 
when we speak of things of such vast importance. But, sir, if 
the visible church, and the professors of all descriptions, have 
made a mistake respecting the extent of the work of salvation, 
have they not committed a grievous offence against their God 
and Savior, by substituting vengeance when infinite love only 
is displayed, and making it appear that either the will or the 
power of the Kedeemer was wanting to complete the work of 
salvation?" 

"If Scripture was not so clear on this point as it is," replied 

Lord H , "we ought to put our mouths in the dust and be 

silent ; but even allowing for argument's sake, that the inten- 
tions of God toward those who die in a hardened state are 
doubtful ; supposing that the texts on either side are so bal- 
anced, as not to admit of decision upon the point, the one 
party, at least, ought to be as careful as the other in hazarding 
its opinions. The one party ought to be as much afraid of 
giving offence by asserting that the misery of the wicked is 
eternal in the face of such texts as these : — 'This is a faithful 
saying, and worthy of all acceptation, for therefore we both 
labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, 
who is the Savior of all men, especially of them that believe ;' — 



108 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

I repeat, tliat the one party should at least be equally cautious 
"with the other, and that there is the same reason for silencing 
one party as another by the plea that they are meddling with 
things too high for them, and coming to conclusions, which 
they cannot do, even by their own statements, without forcing 
some passages and adding words to others not found in the 
original text." 

"You think, my lord, then," said Henry, "that we may sum 
up all the purposes of God toward man in one word, and that 
is love ; and that all the follies, all the pains, all the sorrow, and 
even all the offences of man, are permitted for his ultimate 
good. " 

"I do," replied Lord H , "and I am assured that I have 

not been suffered to expect too much ; this is not an error 
which has ever been charged on a child of God from the begin- 
ning of time." 

In another passage, referring to a former writer, 
she says : 

The Gospel, by the grace of God, bringeth salvation to 
all men; but few, in comparison, have seen this, so as cordially 
to fall in with and confess it, when by all men is to be under- 
stood, every individual of the human race. Some, indeed, in 
every period of the Christian church, have seen and acknowl- 
edged this, but by one means or other, this excellency of the 
Gospel has been hidden from the eyes of the generality of 
both preachers and hearers. * * * 

In "Shanty the Blacksmith" the great truth is 
fully stated : 

"And so," continued the old man, "when it was given me 
to see and accept this one passage first, in its completeness, all 
other parts of Scripture seemed to fall at once in their places ; 
and the prophecies, the beautiful prophecies of future peace 
and joy to the earth, of the destruction of death and of hell, 
all opened out to me, as being hidden and shut up in Christ — 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 109 

for Christ is all; and as I desired the treasure, so I was drawn 
more and more toward him who keeps the treasure, and all 
this," he would add, "was done for me, through no deserts or 
deservings of my own ; for, till this light was vouchsafed me, I 
was as other unregenerate men, living only to myself, and for 
myself; and more than this," he would say, "were it the divine 
will to withdraw the light, I should turn again to be dead and 
hard, as iron on the cold anvil." In this way, Shanty often 
used to talk to Mrs. Margaret, and after awhile to Tamar; but 
the old lady for many years remained incapable of entering so 
entirely as he could wish, into his views of the sufficiency of 
the Redeemer. She could not give up entirely her notions of 
the need of some works, not as evidences of the salvation of 
an individual, but as means of ensuring that salvation, and 
accordingly she never met with Shanty for many years, with- 
out hinting at this discrepancy in their opinions, which hints 
seldom failed of bringing forward an argument. 

In 1839, she wrote a letter to Eev. Dr. Thorn, of 
Liverpool, Eng., avowing herself a Universalist. 



% H* !♦ JBtfcHrog— A. D. 1775-1854. 

The great metaphysician thus speaks in "Bemarks 
on I. Cor. xv : 24." (Original translation.) 

To the Son, then, is Being away from God, alienated from 
God and the Father, given over, that he may reconcile it again 
to the Father. He has received Being as away from and unac- 
ceptable to the Father, that he may give it back to him again, 
as Godlike, again acceptable and reconciled to him. This will 
be completely realized only at the end of the "World-time. Then 
shall Being which was away from God and wholly alienated 
from him be in the Father. — Sammtliche Werke iv: 62. 



110 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

$nvn\ Ipmrtsij ffixnm*. 

"Nearer My God to Thee, "is the composition of a 
Universalist woman. So says Henry Crabb Eobinson, 
her friend, in his famous "Diary." 



H[jtiter Jtotrcg^ |mttkni+— A. D. 1775-1864. 

No English writer has ever surpassed Landor for 
purity, strength and beauty of style. His "Imaginary 
Conversations" and other publications are classic. He 
often asserts, and far oftener implies his belief in the 
final restoration, notably in the conversations between 
Melancthon and Calvin, and between the emperor of 
China and his ambassador. He observes : 

Our blessed Lord himself in his last hours, ventured to 
express a wish before his heavenly Father that the bitter cup 
might pass away from him. I humbly dare to implore that a 
cup much bitterer may be removed from the great body of 
mankind ; a cup containing the poison of eternal punishment, 
where agony succeeds to agony, but never death. 

"Sometimes I have been ready to believe," says Bocaccio 
to Petrarca in Landor's"Pentanieron,""so far as our holy faith 
will allow me, that it were better our Lord were nowhere than 
torturing in his inscrutable wisdom to all eternity so many 
myriads of us poor devils, the creatures of his hands." 

If God's first love was hell making, we might almost wish 
his affections were as mutable as ours are. 



A CLOUD OF "WITNESSES. Ill 

Tpttnj QijaMt ^riratsxro — A. D. 1775-1867. 

This English lawyer and litterateur, was the inti- 
mate friend of Wordsworth, Southey, Lamh, Lady 
Byron, etc. His"Diaryand Correspondence "published 
in London, and in this country republished by Field, 
Osgood & Co., in 1869, is full of the most pronounced 
Universalism on his part, and on that of many of his 
contemporaries and friends, as Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
Southey, Lamb, Lady Byron, Helen Maria Williams, 
Sarah Flower Adams, Clarkson, and others. He says : 

I had with Anthony Eobinson a long and serious talk on 
religion, and on that inexplicable riddle, the origin of evil. He 
remarked that the amount of pain here justifies the idea of pain 
hereafter, and so the popular notion of punishment is author- 
ized. But I objected that evil or pain here may be a mean 
towards an end. So may pain inflicted as a punishment. But 
endless punishment would be itself an end in a state where no 
ulterior object could be conceived. Anthony Eobinson declared 
this to be a better answer to the doctrine of eternal punishment 
than any given by Price or Priestly. Leibnitz, who in terms 
asserts eternal punishment, explains away the idea by affirm- 
ing merely that the consequences of sin must be eternal, and 
that a lower degree of bliss is eternal punishment. 

Speaking of Benecke, whom he calls a "most remarkable 
German, "he says his speculation was that every one had taken 
part in the great rebellion in a former state, and that we were 
all ultimately to be restored to the divine favor, and then adds, 
"this doctrine of the final restoration was the redeeming article 
of his creed." 

"I was not aware," says Eobinson in a letter to 
his brother, "that John Wesley had ever said any- 



112 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

thing so bold as your quoted words, that 'Calvin's God 
was worse than his devil.' " 



$ ©mtqtfcJL— A. D. 1777-1844. 

The famous author of the " Pleasures of Hope, " 
seems to have obtained a glimpse of "eternal hope"; 

Eternal hope ! when yonder spheres sublime, 
Peal'd their first notes to sound the march of Time, 
Thy joyous youth began — but not to fade, — 
"When all the sister planets have decay'd ; 
"When wrapt in fire the realms of ether glow, 
And heaven's last thunder shakes the world below; 
Thou, undismayed, shalt o'er the ruins smile, 
And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile. 



W}*mn$ Itum^— A. D. 1779-1852. 

"The Bard of Erin" has uttered the ultimate 
optimism in many passages, both prose and poetry. 
In "The Epicurean," one of the most eloquent prose 
poems in the language, he says : 

Passing, then, in review, the long train of inspired inter- 
preters whose pens and whose tongues were made the echoes 
of the divine voice, lie traced through the events of successive 
ages, the gradual unfolding of the dark scheme of Providence 
— darkness without, but all light and glory within. The 
glimpses of a coming redemption, visible even through the 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 113 

wrath of heaven ; the long series of prophecy through which 
this hope runs, burning and alive, like a spark along a chain ; 
— the slow and merciful preparation of the hearts of mankind 
for the great trial of their faith and obedience that was at hand, 
not only by miracles that appealed to the living, but by prophe- 
cies launched into the future to carry conviction to the yet 
unborn; "through all these glorious and beneficent gradations 
we may track," said he, "the manifest footsteps of a creator, 
advancing to his grand ultimate end, the salvation of his 
creatures." 

Here is another passage : 

"Such," continued the hermit, "was the mediator, prom- 
ised through all time, to 'make reconciliation for iniquity,' to 
change death into life, and bring 'healing on Ins wings' to a 
darkened world. Such was the last crowning dispensation of 
that God of benevolence, in whose hands sin and death are 
but instruments of everlasting good, and who, bringing all 
things 'out of darkness into his marvellous light,' proceeds 
watchfully and unchangingly to the great, final object of his 
providence, the restoration of the whole human race to purity 
and happiness!" 

In the Appendix to the work is the following note : 

"The restoration of the whole human race to purity and 
happiness." This benevolent doctrine — which not only goes 
far to solve the great problem of moral and physical evil, but 
which would, if received more generally, tend to soften the 
spirit of uncharitableness, so fatally prevalent among Chris- 
tian sects — was maintained by that great light of the early 
church, Origen, and has not wanted supporters among more 
modern theologians. That Tillotson was inclined to the opin- 
ion, appears from his sermon, preached before the queen. Paley 
is supposed to have held the same amiable doctrine ; and New- 
ton (the author of the work on "Prophecies") is also among 
the supporters of it. For a full account of the arguments in 
favor of this opinion, derived both from reason, and the express 
8 



114 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

language of Scripture, see Dr. Soutlrwood Smith's very inter- 
esting work, "On the Divine Government." 

Moore's poetry is more explicit than his prose. In 
the "Loves of the Angels, " the poet proceeds to describe 
an angel as standing and breathing : 

Inwardly a voiceless prayer, 
Unheard by all but Mercy's ear, 
And which if Mercy did not hear,— 
Oh, God would not be what this bright 
And glorious universe of his, — 
This world of beauty, Gospel light 
And endless love, proclaims he is ! 

This is the poetry of Universalism. What, then, 
shall we say of this ? 

But not r i lone the wonders found, 

Thro' Nature's realm — the unveiled, material, 
Visible glories that hung round, 
Hike lights, through her enchanted ground — 

But whatsoe'er unseen, etherial, 
Dwells far away from human sense, 
"Wrapped in its own intelligence, — 
The mystery of that Fountain Head, 

From which all vital spirit runs, 
All breath of life, where'er 'tis shed, 

Through men or angels, flowers or suns — 
The workings of the Almighty Mind, 
"When first o'er chaos he designed 
The outlines of this world ; and through 

That spread of darkness — like the bow, 
Called out of rain-clouds, hue by hue, 

Saw the grand, gradual picture grow ! — 
The covenant with human kind, 

Which God has made — the chains of Fate, 
He round himself and them hath twined, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 115 

'Till his high task he consummate — 
'Till good from evil, love from hate, 

Shall be worked out through sin and pain 
And Fate shall loose her iron chain, 
And all be free, be bright again. 



9omq Jtotify.— A. D. 1779-1849. 

Horace and James — the brothers Smith — are 
among those who testify against error : 

Keligions — from the soul deriving breath, — 

Should know no death ; 
Yet do they perish, mingling their remains 

With fallen fanes. 
Creeds, canons, dogmas, councils, are the wrecked 
And mouldering masonry of intellect. 

Apis, Osiris, paramount of yore 

On Egypt's shore, — 
Woden amd Thor, through the wide North adored, 

With blood outpoured, — 
Jove, and the multiform divinities 
To whom the Pagan nations bowed their knees, — 

Lo ! they are cast aside, dethroned, forlorn, 

Defaced, out- worn, 
Like the world's childish dolls, which but insult 

Its age adult, 
Or prostrate scarecrows, on whose rags we tread 
With scorn proportioned to our former dread. 

Is there no compass, then, by which to steer 

This erring sphere ? 
No tie that may indissolubly bind 

To God, mankind ? 



116 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

No code that may defy Time's sharpest tooth ? 
No fixed, immutable, unerring truth ? 
There is ! there is ! One primitive and sure, 

Keligion pure, 
Unchanged in spirit, though its forms and codes 

Wear myriad modes, 
Contains all creeds within its mighty span: 
The love of God displayed in love of man. 
This is the Christian's faith when rightly read ; 

Oh ! may it spread, 
Till earth redeemed from every hateful leaven 

Makes peace with heaven ; 
Below one blessed brotherhood of love, 
One Father — worshiped with one voice — above ! 



Father and God ! whose love and might 

To every sense are blazoned bright 
On the vast three-leaved Bible — earth — sea — sky, 

Pardon th' impugners of thy laws, 

Expand their hearts, and give them cause 
To bless th' exhaustless grace they now deny. 

The brothers, James and Horace Smith, in" Be jected 

Addresses," have said : 

The present and the past assure us, by millions of incon- 
testable proofs, that the benevolent Creator sympathizes with 
our happiness ; then he must sympathize more tenderly with 
our sufferings. To suppose he would scatter all sorts of delights 
around us in this evanescent world, and yet doom the great 
mass of mankind to everlasting anguish in the next, is an irrec- 
oncilable contradiction. 



tpmm Jffim} ®}nnmn%>— A. D. 1780-1842. 

The great Unitarian accepted and announced 
principles wholly at war with endless evil, and that 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 117 

logically result in universal salvation, but he nowhere, 
that we remember, explicitly announces that great 
truth on which the Unitarians are now substantially 
agreed. He declares : 

We consider the errors which relate to Christ's person as 
of little or no importance compared with the error of those who 
teach that God brings us into life wholly depraved and wholly 
helpless, that he leaves multitudes without that aid which is 
indispensably necessary to their repentance, and then plunges 
them into everlasting burnings and unspeakable torture for 
not repenting. This we consider as one of the most injurious 
errors which ever darkened the Christian world, and none will 
pretend that we have anything to fear from exposing this error 
to our people. 



\m % Sarfumtetv »♦>♦— A. D- 1780-1840. 

Dr. Lant Carpenter, eminent among English 
Unitarians, observes : 

As nothing approaching to the feelings of vindictive ven- 
geance can have place in the Divine mind, and as the best 
notions of punishment we are able to form, require us to keep in 
view the reformation of the offender, — to me it appears neces- 
sary to follow, not only from the paternal, but even from the 
judicial and rectorial character of God, that when suffering 
has done its work, and the deep stains of guilt have been 
removed, as by fire, suffering will be no longer required. When 
unholy desires, malignant passions, sordid selfishness, cause- 
less impiety and neglect of religion have been eradicated, and 
the once wicked being looks up with humble submission to 
him whose wisdom and goodness have appointed his unmingled, 
unalleviated anguish, with humble acknowledgment that his 



118 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

ways are good as well as righteous, and with freedom from those 
bonds which made misery his home, — what Scriptural repre- 
sentation of God forbids the belief that the Father of spirits 
will thenceforwards commence that progress in holiness and 
consequent happiness, to which through his infinite mercy, he 
had before raised myriads of his frail children of mortality? 
That, by his almighty power and infinite wisdom, he can thus 
eradicate guilt and misery, who can doubt ? and that he will 
do it, who can doubt, unless he have himself told us that he will 
not? 

Those views of the divine character to which I refer, inev- 
itably lead to the belief that there will be a time when all the 
rational creatures of God will have been purified from every 
pollution, and made fit for holiness and consequently, for hap- 
piness. Most of us believe that a period will come to each 
individual when punishment shall have done its work, when 
the awful sufferings with which the Gospel threatens the impen- 
itent and disobedient, will have humbled the stubborn, puri- 
fied the polluted, and eradicated the malignity, impiety, 
hypocrisy, and every evil disposition ; — that a period will come 
(which it may be the unspeakable bliss of those who enter the 
joy of their Lord, to accelerate, which, at least, it will be their 
delight to anticipate), when he "who must reign till he hath 
put all enemies under his feet," "shall have put down all 
rule and all authority and power." "The last enemy, Death, 
shall be destroyed." "Every tongue shall confess that Jesus 
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father, " who wills 
that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of 
the truth — that truth which sanctifies the heart, that knowledge 
which is "life eternal," and "God shall be all in all." 



Wjf* Jfcfc JBrir fH&mm.— A. D. 1782-1854. 

"The People's Own Book," by F. De La Mennais, 
is translated from the French by Nathaniel Greene, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 119 

Boston, 1840. The original is "Le Livre duPeuple," 
by Abbe F. De La Mennais. 

If suffering was eternal, the malady of which it was the 
punishment would be so, also, consequently moral evil ; and that 
evil eternal, would constitute, in opposition to the good prin- 
ciple, the evil principle of the dualistic systems, we should be 
compelled to conceive of it as independent, as subsisting by 
itself, or to admit something still more monstrous, for if it was 
not self-existent, if it depended on the divine will, God would 
be the direct author of evil. * * * . 

We, ourselves, constitute our hell, our purgatory, our 
heaven, according to the state of the soul, on which necessarily 
depends the state of the body, and however low may be that 
point from which they start, all souls tend towards heaven, and 
all will arrive there with more or less labor, because God draws 
all to himself, because God is love, and love is stronger than 
death. 

People, guard against incarnating your sublime hopes in 
the dust which you trample under your feet. During your 
short earthly pilgrimage you are surrounded but by phantoms, 
by vain shadows ; the realities are invisible to you, the eye of 
flesh cannot seize them, but God, who has given to man his 
invincible desire for them, has also planted in Ms heart the 
infallible presentiment of their attainment. 

Apart from the mortal appendages with which it has been 
confounded, Christianity is the first and last law of humanity ; 
for beside God nothing can be proposed as the goal of man ; 
nor is there any other way of approaching God, any other 
means of becoming united with him, than by love ; nor will this 
great commandment of love ever be exhausted, either upon 
earth, where its effect will be to form of all individuals, all fam- 
ilies, all people, one sole unity, that of the human race, — or in 
heaven, where it will find its accomplishment in the constantly 
more and more perfect union of all creatures with the creator. 
And thus what Christ said is now and ever will be true : — 
"Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I 



120 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

will give you rest." And one day all will come unto him, and 
that day is not distant ; already it dawns in the bosom of futu- 
rity. "We now walk as by a feeble twilight, when the radiant 
star shall rise, the world, deluged with light, and feeling within 
itself, with the revival of hope, the revival also of faith and love, 
shall salute it with songs of joy. 



^mSpntfrnt Inraij — A. D. 1783-1859. 

The entire spirit of Irving' s cheerful works is the 
spirit of our faith. Kev. I. D. "Williamson, D. D., relates 
in the Herald and Era, that on a voyage across the 
Atlantic, in April, 1842, in the ship Independence, he 
preached a sermon from the text, "As many as I love 
I rebuke and chasten," a thoroughly Universalistic 
discourse, since published in Dr. Williamson's volume, 
"Endless Misery Eefuted." At its close Mr. Irving 
took Dr. Williamson by the hand, and said : 

I thank you, sir, for that sermon. There was more of 
sound sense in it than I often hear in a discourse. That is the 
doctrine I believe and want to practice. 



Jtenrari Jtafott— A. D. 1784r-1849. 

The genial Quaker poet denies that "too late" will 
ever be heard in heaven. 

Bitter the anguish with these two words blended, 
For those contemplating their hopeless lot, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 121 

"Who find life's Summer past, — its harvest ended, 
And Winter nigh, while they are gathered not. 

Yet do thou, Lord, by thy supreme conviction, 

Give them to feel that, though their sins are great, 

Thy love and mercy own not our restriction, 
But that with thee, it never is too late ! 



Jaitft fmti— A. D. 1784-1859. 

One of the most voluminous and elegant of the 
poetical and prose writers of England has exerted a 
vast influence in favor of the belief in a world's sal- 
vation. In a review of the writings of Hannah More, 
he says : 

It is time for philosophy and true religion to know one 
another, and not hesitate to follow the most influential truths 
into their consequences. If "a small unkindness is a great 
offence," what would Miss Hannah More have said to the inflic- 
tion of eternal punishment ? Or are God and his ways eter- 
nally to be represented as something so different from the best 
attributes of humanity, that the wonder must be, how human- 
ity can survive in spite of the mistake ? The truth is, that the 
circulation of Miss More's own blood was a better thing than 
all her doctrines put together ; and luckily it is a much more 
universal inheritance. The heart of man is continually sweep- 
ing away the errors he gets into his brain. 

Elsewhere he says : 

Heaven and earth should petition to be abolished, rather 
than one such monstrosity (a victim of infinite suffering) 
should exist ; — it is the absurdest, as well as the most impious 
of all fears. 



222 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

He is most explicit in his autobiography, declar- 
ing: 

My father, though a clergyman of the Established Church, 
had settled, as well as my mother, into a Christian of the Uni- 
versalist persuasion, which believes in the final restoration of 
all things. It was hence that I learned the impiety (as I have 
expressed it,) of the doctrine of eternal punishment. In the 
present clay, a sense of impiety, in some way or other, whether 
of doubt or sophistication, is the secret f eeling of nine-tenths 
of all churches ; and every church will discover, before long, 
that it must rid itself of the doctrine, if it would not cease to 

exist. Love is the only creed destined to survive all others. 

* * * * * # * * 

This palpable revelation, then, of God, which is called the 
universe, contains no evidence whatsoever of the tiling called 
eternal punishment ; and why should I admit any assertion of 
it that is not at all palpable ? If an angel were to tell me to 
believe in eternal punishment I would not do it ; for it would 
better become me to believe the angel a delusion, than God 
monstrous ; and we make him monstrous when we make him 
the author of eternal punishment, though we have not the cour- 
age to think so. For God's sake, let us have piety enough to 
believe him better. 

Such are the doctrines, and such only, accompanied by 
expositions of the beauties and wonders by God's great book of 
the universe, which will be preached in the temples of the 
earth, including those of our beloved country, England, its 
beautiful old ivied turrets and their green neighborhoods, then, 
for the first time, thoroughly uncontradicted and heavenly; 
with not a sound in them more terrible than the stormy yet 
sweet organ, analogous to the beneficent winds and tempests ; 
and no thought of here or hereafter, that can disturb the quiet 
aspect of the graves,*or the welcome of the new-born darling^ 

And that such a consummation may come, slowly and surely ? 
without intermission in its advance, and with not an injury to 
a living soul, will be the last prayer, as it must needs be among 
the latest words, of the author of this book. ***** 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 123 

Leigh Hunt delights to bear his testimony in 
behalf of the truth. Universalism is with him a defin- 
ite theory. And the cheerful, and moral, and sub- 
lime sentiments his works inculcate, are natural results. 
Eev. A. C. Thomas relates a most interesting inter- 
view with the venerable man, enjoyed in the year 
1853. The evangelist had presented the poet with a 
copy of his "Autobiography." "Oh, what* pleasure 
would this have imparted to my father and my mother !" 
was the recorded outpouring of the heart of Leigh 
Hunt. 

"It was worth a long journey to spend an evening 
with Leigh Hunt. So genial in his spirit, so kindly 
in his every thought, so completely is he imbued with 
the spirit of Universalism, that you feel yourself in 
conversation with 'Abou Ben Adhem.' I mentioned 
his poem with that title, and told him how repeatedly 
it had been quoted and printed, until it had become 
a household word in all circles of the United States. 
He w T as greatly pleased with the information, not so 
much, he said, because he had put the sentiment into 
an acceptable shape (though he was not indifferent 
to his reputation as an author), as because the senti- 
ment itself had found a sympathetic answer so gen- 
erally in the human heart despite the hard training 
of sectarian creeds. 'The heart,' he continued, 'is, 
after all, the final judge of religious truth, and it is a 
melancholy thing that so many Christian people, who 



124 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

have personally been redeemed from barbarism, 
should have brought along with them the gods of 
barbarism ! ' 

"We spoke of Dante. < In my early life,' said he, 
'I wrote a series of papers on the Italian poets. 
While making a prose version of Dante's "Hell," I 
could but love the real spirit of the man, while I 
abhorred the thoughts he invested with the attrac- 
tions of poesy. And I felt persuaded that he must 
have had an angel for his mother and a devil for 
his father.' " 

Death is a road our dearest friends have gone ; 
Why, with such leaders, fear to say "Lead on"? 
Its gate repels, lest it too soon be tried ; 
But turns in balm on the immortal side. 
Mothers have passed it ; fathers ; children ; men, 
"Whose like we look not to behold again ; 
Women, that smiled away their loving breath; — 
Soft is the traveling on the road of Death ! 

But Guilt has passed it ! Men not fit to die ! 

Oh, hush — for he that made us all, is by ! 

Human were all ; all men ; all born of mothers ; 

All our own selves, in the worn shape of others ; 

Our used and oh ! be sure, not to be ill-used brothers ! 

"Abou Ben Adhem" breathes the very soul of the 
Universalist faith. 

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase !) 
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, 
And saw, within the moonlight of his room, 
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, 
An angel, writing in a book of gold ; 
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold; 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 125 

And to the presence in the room he said, 

"What writest thou?" The vision raised his head, 

And, with a look made of all sweet accord, 

Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." 

"And is mine one ?" said Aboil. "Nay, not so," 

Beplied the angel. Abou spake more low, 

But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then, 

Write me as one that loves his fellow men." 

The angel wrote and vanished. The next night 

It came again with a great wakening light, 

And showed the names whom love of God had blessed, 

And lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest ! 



Wipmnz Jq |mitt^ + — A. D. 1785-1859. 
In a treatise on the aeonian words, De Quincey 



If it be an excess of blindness which can overlook the 
aionian differences amongst even neutral entities, much deeper 
is that blindness which overlooks the separate tendencies of 
things evil and things good. Naturally, all evil is fugitive, and 
allied to death. I, separately, speaking for myself only, pro- 
foundly believe that the Scriptures ascribe absolute eternity 
to one sole being, viz : — to God — and derivatively to all others 
according to the interest which they can plead in God's favor. 
Having anchorage in God, innumerable entities may possibly be 
admitted to a participation in divine aion. But what interest 
in the favor of God can belong to falsehood, to malignity, to 
impurity? To invest them with aionian privileges, is, in 
effect, and by its results, to distrust and to insult the Deity. 
Evil would not be evil, if it had that power of self-subsistence 
which is imputed to it in supposing its aionian life to be 
co-eternal with that which crowns and glorifies the good. 



126 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

%tdpt Jhv^nU—A. D. 1785-1866. 

Pierpont's exquisite poem," He is Not There," 
expresses the full measure of faith, and is as hostile 
to the idea of a partial salvation, as was the life of its 
author. It concludes : 

Yes, we all live to God ; 

Father, thy chastening rod 
So help us thine afflicted ones, to bear, 

That, in the spirit land, 

Meeting at thy right hand, 
'Twill be our heaven to find that he is there. 

His celebrated hymn on Universal worship ends 
in these fitting words : 

Oh, thou, to whom, in ancient time, 
The lyre of prophet bards was strung, 

To thee at last in every clime, 

Shall temples rise, and praise be sung. 



gdpt Htfeom— A. D. 1785-1844. 

Kit North" has given the following testimonies 

Oh ! how oft 
In seasons of depression, — when the lamp 
Of life burned dim, and all unpleasing thoughts 
Subdued the proud aspirings of the soul, — 
When doubts and fears withheld the timid eye 
From scanning scenes to come, and a deep sense 
Of human frailty turned the past to pain, — 
How oft have I remembered that a world 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 127 

Of glory lay around me, — that a source 

Of lofty solace lay in every star; 

And that no being need behold the sun 

And grieve, that knew who hung him in the sky ! 

Thus unperceived I woke from heavy grief 

To airy joy; and seeing that the mind 

Of man, though still the image of his God, 

Leaned by his will on various happiness, 

I felt that all was good ; that faculties 

Though low, might constitute, if rightly used, 

True wisdom, and when man hath here attained 

The purpose of his being, he will sit 

Near Mercy's throne, whether his course hath been 

Prone on the earth's dim sphere, or, as with wing 

Of viewless eagle round the central blaze. 



Like children for some bauble fair 
That weep themselves to rest, 

We part with life — awake ! and there 
The jewel in our breast ! 



In 1842, Prof. Espy, who was then called by way 
of derision, the " Storm King, " was invited to lecture 
before the "Baltimore Murray Institute," on his favor- 
ite theory, which was the origin of the present sig- 
nal service, etc., etc. A member of the Universal- 
ist parish was about to publish a portrait of the pas- 
tor of the church, and submitted the selection of the 
motto to Prof. Espy, giving him the choice of two pas- 



128 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

sages of Scripture ; one was, "As in Adam all die, 
even so in Christ shall all be made alive" ; the other, 
"Have we not all one Father?" The professor re- 
marked : 

Both are good, but "Have we not all one Father?" is infin- 
itely the better. It is a question which will induce men to think, 
and if men will only think they will very soon discard the idea 
of eternal punishment. If one Father, of course it follows one 
origin, and one destiny for all ; I have not been a close student 
of the Bible, but of one thing I feel quite sure, the Universal- 
ists have both reason and philosophy on their side. 

"Thus spoke Mr. Espy to me in 1842." So writes 
Kev. James Shrigley. 



JSm ©uratmg^mu— A. D. 1785-1842. 

Besides mentioning the fact that Burns was a. 
Universalist, Cunningham indicates his love for the 
doctrine, in his "Life and "Writings of Burns, " andinhis 
novel, "Koldau," a copy of which I have been unable 
to consult. 



%n\n Tfotms, J&&—A. D. 1788-1856. 

This eloquent author of "The Christ of History,"' 
and "The Creator and the Creation," (Strahan & Co., 
London,) says in the preface to the third edition, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 129 

that in the first issue, in 1857, he had not undertaken 
a solution of the mystery of evil, but that now, in 
1870, he can see further. He adds: 

It has seemed to me that a richer and more comprehensive 
meaning than I once was able to perceive lies in these apostolic 
words, "It pleased the Father that in him (Christ) should all 
fulness dwell, and * * * by him (Christ) to reconcile all things 
unto himself, by him I say, whether they be things on earth, or 
things in heaven" (Col. i : 19, 20). These words clearly convey 
that Christ is the chosen Bedeemer of the whole universe of 
being. They teach that the reconciliation and restoration to 
God of the entire creation, throughout the eternal ages, was 
the grand end of our Lord's life and death and reign, the end 
of all the vast, complicated, and seemingly inexplicable move- 
ments of earthly Providence, and of all the sacred dispensa- 
tions, economies and ministries of time. The conception is 
full of rapture, and it is as sanctifying as it is grand. Every 
pious soul could but exult in the belief (were it shown to be 
Scriptural, consistent and rational), that God-in-Christ shall 
yet reign over an entire, regenerated, holy and happy universe. 

After quoting John iii : 17, xii : 32 ; Isa. xlv : 22 ; 
Eom. v : 18, 19, xii : 25 ; I. Cor. xv : 22 ; I. Tim. ii : 4, 
and iv : 10 to prove the doctrine of universal salvation 
Scriptural, he says : 

Independently of the Scriptural evidence, there are two 
great principles, in which the belief of universal salvation is 
firmly grounded. First, the absolute inpreventability of moral 
evil, in free, finite beings. God alone is infallible and immut- 
able, because he alone is self-existent and eternal. All finite 
beings, in the finity of their nature, which neither they nor 
their Maker could change, are fallible, and have actually fallen 
either as individuals or as races. Second, it is inconceivable, 
because it would uproot our deepest moral convictions and prin- 
ciples, that the infinitely loving, pure and blessed God could 
9 



130 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

create a single being, foreknowing, and above all fore-ordain- 
ing, that that being should exist in eternal sin, the thing which 
he infinitely abhors, even if no eternal misery were entailed by 
it ; much more when eternal sin must be also eternal misery. 

To my co-religionists of the evangelical school, I humbly 
commend a conclusion, to which none of them can be more 
sternly averse than I once was, but which I now believe to be 
full of glory to the ever blessed Redeemer and to the great 
Father of all souls. (P. 213.) The solution of the confusions and 
troubles and vices of time, lies in the relation of time to eter- 
nity, and in the settled faith that the Great Father is ever 
doing the very best which is possible, for each and for all, even 
now, and that at last the Almighty Maker shall be the Almighty 
Redeemer and Restorer of all souls. 

On one point it is impossible to feel the least hesitation ; 
eternal punishment in the sense of conscious suffering, even in 
a single instance, is inconceivable and unendurable by any 
sound and sane conscience. With great reverence I venture 
to express the conviction that if the Great Being foreknew 
that even this eternal torpor, but much more that eternal mis- 
ery, conscious suffering, would be the doom even of a single 
creature, it is incredible that he should have given existence to 
that creature. 

This work is warmly commended by Sir Wm. Ham- 
ilton. 



Jtottijtmuts* 



In the Philaclelphian Magazine for 1788 (London), 
these quaint words are printed ; they are said to have 
been written by a blind girl : 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 131 

Could we with ink the ocean fill, 

Were the whole earth of parchment made, 
Were every single stick a quill, 
And every man a scribe by trade, 

To write the love 

Of God above, 
Would drain the ocean dry, 

Nor could the scroll 

Contain the whole, 
Though stretched from sky to sky. 



l^timns $rsfeh% tff ^inhiipn.— 1788-1870. 

Erskine was a country gentleman of large wealth, 
educated originally for the bar, but who never practiced, 
and the writer of several theological works of marked 
ability. Dr. Chalmers said of one of them, "The 
Unconditional Freenessof the Gospel, "that it was "one 
of the most delightful books ever written." Erskine 
was a pronounced Universalist, and many passages in 
his books breathe the spirit and teachings of our faith. 

He is mentioned by Dean Stanley in his "Lec- 
tures on the History of the Church of Scotland." See 
also "Contemporary Review," of 1878, Vol. XXXII, p. 
457, "Present Day Papers," "Letters of Thomas 
Erskine," by Dr. Hanna, "Contemporary Review," 
May, 1870. Some of the works which he published, 
are : — "The Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel," 
"The Purpose of God in Creation," "An Essay on 



132 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Faith," "TheBrazen Serpent," "Evidences of Eevealed 
Eeligion." In a letter to Mr, Craig, author of a work 
called "Final Salvation," Mr. Erskine writes : 

I believe that the love and righteousness and justice of 
God, mean exactly the same thing, viz : — A desire to bring his 
whole moral creation into a participation of his own character, 
and his own blessedness. He has made us capable of this, and 
he will not cease from using the best means for accomplishing 
it in us all. When I think of God making a creature of such 
capacities, it seems to me almost blasphemous to suppose that 
he will throw it from him into everlasting darkness because it 
has resisted his gracious purposes toward it for the natural 
period of human life. No ; he who waited so long for the for- 
mation of a piece of old red sandstone, will surely wait with 
much long-suffering for the perfecting of a human spirit. 

In another letter to the same, he says : 

I cannot believe that any human being can be beyond the 
reach of God's grace, and the sanctifying power of his spirit- 
And if all are within his reach, is it possible to suppose that 
he will allow any to remain unsanctified? Is not the love 
revealed in Jesus Christ a love unlimited, unbounded, which 
will not leave undone anything which love could desire ? It 
was surely nothing else than the complete and universal tri- 
umph of that love which Paul was contemplating when he 
cried out, "Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and 
knowledge of God!" 

In a letter to Bishop Argyl he writes : 

I believe that God's purpose in my being is to teach me 
to receive himself, his own spirit, nature, character, into me ; 
and I believe he has the same purpose for all spiritual beings. 
How long it may be before the end is attained, I don't attempt 
to conjecture; but of this I am sure, that his search after the 
lost sheep will not cease until he has found it. I believe that 
God's purpose in creating spiritual beings, is to educate them, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 133 

that they cannot be made good in the full sense of the word, 
and therefore, it is a great mistake to call our present state a 
state of probation, as if we were here on trial. This idea gives 
a wrong interpretation to conscience ; it makes us feel as if we 
were continually standing before a judgment seat, instead of 
being in our Father's school. — Present Day Papers, p. 35. 

The blessed hope that you and I cherish for the ultimate 
salvation of all, is, I think, fully borne out by distinct, unequiv- 
ocal declarations in the Scriptures. (Romans, chaps, v andxi.) 
But the spirit of the whole Scripture, notwithstanding appar- 
ent superficial contradictions, is all in the same direction. The 
restitution of all things is the bright goal before us to animate 
exertion, whilst it gives the continual assurance that it is only 
through holiness that it can be reached. The consent of the 
mind to remain in suspense on such a point because of any 
supposed uncertainty in the word aionlos, seems to me a sad 
phenomenon. "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with 
good," ought, I think, to decide the question; it is the char- 
acter of God. He is love, and created men to be partakers in 
his own holiness, and will he be overcome of evil ? — Present 
Day Papers, p. 40. 

One of his friends wrote, "Everything in you 
reminds me of God." 



J)r* 1. jtatfljpmro% fmi%— A. D. 1788-1861. 

Toward the close of his "Illustrations of the Divine 
Government," this celebrated author writes : 

A firm persuasion that our Creator is possessed of every 
possible excellence, that he is our constant and best friend, 
that we are entirely at his merciful disposal, that he is conduct- 
ing us, and all our brethren of mankind, by the wisest means, 



134 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

to the highest happiness, and that the natural and moral dis- 
orders which afflict us are the instruments by which he will 
eventually establish the universal and eternal reign of purity 
and bliss, cannot but tend to expand the heart, to cherish the 
benevolent affections, to soften the manners, and unite the 
whole human race in the tenderest bands of friendship and 
affection. Were it right to judge of the general effect which 
the frequent and serious contemplation of these sublime and 
cheering truths would have on the mind, by the feeling of 
which he who has made this humble attempt to illustrate and 
establish them, has been conscious while engaged in the pleas- 
ing task, with sincerity he might say, that it would be highly 
favorable to benevolence and to happiness. A more ardent 
love of the Supreme Being, a purer and warmer attachment to 
his fellow creatures, a more anxious desire to promote the 
attainment of genuine excellence, both in himself and others, has 
glowed in his heart while meditating on these delightful sub- 
jects. * ** And may the anticipation of the universal and ever- 
lasting reign of Purity and Happiness hasten his (the reader's) 
own attainment of both ! 



Jtort Jhpm— A. D. 1788-1824. 

Dr. Kennedy, a Calvinistic Christian, in his con- 
versations with Byron, represents him as speaking in 
the loftiest terms of that powerful defence of Univer- 
salism, T. Southwood Smith's "Divine Government," 
saying, among other things, that it contained the only 
views which could -sustain Christianity against infidel- 
ity. In one of his letters he rebukes those who deride 
reason, and insist on blind belief. Indeed, none can 
read the words of the noble poet, without believing 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 135 

him to be disgusted with the miserable religion of his 
day, and longing for a realization of that, of which, in 
his inspired moments, he caught glimpses, and whose 
mingling harmonies broke in wonderful angel-cadence 
on his ears, in the. times of his communion with the 
Spirit of Beauty. Byron had passed years in sin, but 
he never ascertained the alleged fact that sin hardens 
the heart of man to such a degree, that, although it is 
unpleasant at first, it becomes desirable. He found, 
in his own fearful experience, that 

The mind which is immortal, makes itself 
Bequital for its good or evil thoughts, — 
Is its own origin of ill and end — 
And its own place and time. 

So, also, he says : 

Oh, just God! 
Thy hell is not hereafter ! 

He satirically says : 

I know this is unpopular; I know 

It is blasphemous ; I know one may be damn'd 

For hoping no one else may e'er be so. 

When in Switzerland, he seized the imagery pre- 
sented to his eye and described it as 

White and sulphury, 
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell, 
"Whose every wave breaks on a living shore, 
Heaped with the damned like pebbles. 

But at other times, when the problem of existence 
demanded a solution, he broke out into a declaration 
of the future, seldom surpassed : 



136 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES.. 

The eternal will 
Shall deign to expound this dream 
Of good and evil, and redeem 

Unto himself all times, all things, 
And gathered under his Almighty wings 

Abolish hell! 
And to the expiated earth, 
Restore the beauty of her birth, 
Her Eden in an endless paradise, — 
"Where man no more can fall, as once he fell, 
And even the very demons shall do well ! 

We are far from quoting him as an example, but 
he was one of the gifted of earth, and we are glad to 
know that at times he could look so far into the infin- 
ite future. Often did the beauty of the Eden-land of 
truth open to his entranced vision. Those glimpses he 
has revealed to us. 



The wife of the great poet is very explicit. In a 

letter to Henry Crabb Eobinson — see his "Letters," 

Vol. II, p. 444, — she writes : 

I must confess to intolerance of opinion as to these two 
points, — eternal evil in any form, and (included in it), eternal 
suffering. To believe in these would take away my God, who 
is all-loving. 



jtiq %vm$* jttqrijfttt, %. «♦ J*— A. D. 1789-1859. 

This eminent essayist, though an ardent defender 
of the Episcopal church, is one of the many thousands 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 137 

of her children who revolt from the dogma of endless 
hell torments. He tells us that the true Catholic belief 
and life are, God is Light, and God is Love. He 
speaks of the progress of the mythical system of 
Strauss, and then says: 

The real, though often unavowed, ground of the doubts 
which are thus overclouding the spirits of so many of the nom- 
inal disciples of Christ, is the hopeless dejection with which 
they contemplate that part of the Christian scheme which is 
supposed to consign the vast majority of our race to a future 
state, in which woe, inconceivable in amount, is also eternal in 
duration. From this doctrine the hearts of most men turn 
aside, not only with an instinctive horror, but with an invinci- 
ble incredulity ; of those who believe that it really proceeded 
from the lips of Christ himself, many are sorely tempted by it 
either to doubt the divine authority of any of his words, or to 
destroy their meaning by conjectural evasions of their force. 

With the exception of one dubious expression in the 
Book of Daniel, the Old Testament is entirely silent on the 
subject of the eternity of future punishment. The same thing 
is true of a very large majority of the books of the New Testa- 
ment. 

In reference to Matthew xxv : 46, he says : 

No human being knows, or ever can know what were the 
very words which thus fell from the lips of Christ. They were 
spoken in a dialect of the Syro-Chaldaic. No one even knows 
with any certainty whether our extant Greek version of them 
proceeded from the pen of St. Matthew. On the hypothesis 
adopted by many high critical authorities, we must believe the 
contrary. Assuming, however, that the hand of an inspired 
writer did trace the very words eis kolasin aionion it .will 
yet not necessarily follow that either of those words is a pre- 
cise equivalent for the original which it represents, because for 
terms so abstract, perfectly precise equivalents can seldom, if 
ever, be found in languages so essentially dissimilar as the 
Syro-Chaldaic and Greek. 



138 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

On the supposition, however, that Christ uttered 
the exact words, he says : 

They might be rendered with literal accuracy "life-long 
punishment." 

He thinks Christians should lean toward that 
interpretation which harmonizes with infinite love, 
and adds : 

The angel who descended from heaven and proclaimed to 
the shepherds the incarnation of the Redeemer, announced 
himself as the herald "of good tidings of great joy which should 
be to all people. " But if it be indeed true that he who was 
thus made incarnate, proclaimed an eternity of unutterable 
woe to the vast majority of those, who, from generation to gen- 
eration throng our streets, our marts, and our churches, how 
shall we reconcile the angelic announcement with this awful 
proclamation? The Bible teaches us that Christ came into 
the world to bruise the serpent's head, to destroy the works of 
the devil, and to establish the kingdom of God; and Christ 
himself declared that he "saw Satan like lightning fall from 
heaven." Is it reasonable to accept any construction of the 
other words of Christ, which would seem to ascribe to the 
spirit of evil an eternal triumph over the spirit of good in the 
persons of the vast majority of the race whom he lived and died 
to redeem? 



1% Jftrittfatrgfc Hattatt* 

The following "definition of optimism is from the 
Edinburgh Review, and was perhaps written by the 
same brilliant essayist as the foregoing : 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 139 

It is a devout conviction, that, under the government of a 
benevolent and all-powerful God, everything conduces ultim- 
ately to the best in the world he has created, and that man- 
kind, the constant objects of his paternal care, are in a perpet- 
ual state of improvement and increased happiness. This is a 
great and consoling fact, the summary of all religion and all 
philosophy, the reconciler of all misgivings, and the source of 
all comfort and consolation. 



guljaim J. H[* l^tiit^— A. D. 1789-1850. 

Neander thinks that the apostolic declaration of 
universal confession of allegiance to Christ denotes the 
final salvation of all. He says : 

The doctrine of such a universal restitution would not 
stand in contradiction to the doctrine of eternal punishment, 
as it appears in the Gospels ; for although those who are hard- 
ened in wickedness are to expect endless unhappiness, yet a 
secret decree of the Divine compassion is not necessarily 
excluded, by virtue of which, through the wisdom of God 
revealing itself in the discipline of free agents, they will be led 
to a free appropriation of redemption. 



mpmn* @Hrf^ t — A. D. 1790. 

In a letter to the Edinburgh Scotsman, 1848, Sep- 
tember, Carlyle says : 

The best philosophy teaches us that the very consequences 
(not to speak of the penalties at all) of evil actions die away 



140 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

and become abolished long before eternity ends ; that it is only 
the consequences of good actions that are eternal — for these 
are in harmony with the laws of this universe, and add them- 
selves to it, and cooperate with it forever, while all that is in 
disharmony with it must necessarily be without continuance, 
and soon fall dead — as perhaps you have heard in the sound of 
a Scottish psalm amid the mountains : the true notes alone 
support one another, all following the one true rule ; the false 
notes each following its different false rule, quickly destroy 
one another, and the psalm, which was discordant enough near 
at hand, is a perfect melody when heard from afar. 



:f + ^ + fPmm— A. D. 1791-1868. 

Dean Milman says in his "History of Latin 
Christianity," Yol. VIII, p. 225: 

Purgatory, possible with St. Augustine, probable with 
Gregory the Great, grew up, I am persuaded (its growth is 
singularly indistinct and untraceable), out of the mercy and 
modesty of the priesthood. To the eternity of hell torments 
there is and ever must be — notwithstanding the peremptory 
decrees of dogmatic theology, and the reverential dread of so 
many religious minds of tampering with what seems to be the 
language of the New Testament — a tacit repugnance. 



J$mt Jlfs*fe JtysBs?*— A. D. 1792-1822. 

This child of genius, on whose name the accusa- 
tion of infidelity has rested, was far from being the 
scoffer he has been called. He heartily detested the 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 141 

distorted caricature of Deity in human creeds, and 
his anathemas on superstition and false religion have 
been misconstrued by zealots and bigots, and Shelley 
has been called an infidel. He was well worthy to be 
called a Christian. Here are extracts from his worst 
poem — "Queen Mab," — and we say, as we read, "If 
this be infidelity, let us have the world full of it !" 

He describes what he despises : 

God, hell and heaven, 
A vengeful, pitiless and almighty fiend, 
Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage 
Of tameless tigers hungering for blood. 
Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire, 
"Where poisonous and undying worms prolong 
Eternal misery to those hapless slaves, 
"Whose life has been a penance for its crimes, 
And heaven a meed for those who dare belie 
Their human nature, quake, believe, and cringe, 
Before the mockeries of earthly power ! 

True, every word of it ; a correct description of 
popular error, as is this : 

Twin-sister of Eeligion, Selfishness ! 
Not of the true, but of the false ; — that 

Eeligion prolific fiend, 

"Who peopled earth with demons, hell with men, 
And heaven with slaves ! 

But because he hated such a religion, had he no 
hopes for the future ? These are the thoughts which 
comforted his spirit : 

All tend to perfect happiness, and urge 
The restless wheels of being on their way 



142 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life, 
Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal ; 
For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense 
Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape 
New modes of passion to its frame may lend ; 
Life is its state of action, and the store 
Of all events is aggregated there, 
That variegate the eternal universe ; 
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, 
That leads to azure isles and beaming skies, 
And happy regions of eternal hope. 

Says James Freeman Clarke : 

Shelley thought himself an atheist because he refused to 
believe in the God of Calvin, but he worshiped God as the 
Spirit of Intellectual Beauty. He sang a hymn to this spirit, 
calling it "The Awful Shadow of an Unseen Power" ; and says 
that, amid doubt and change, "Thy light alone gives grace and 
truth to life's unquiet dream. " If Shelley had simply substituted 
the word "God" for the words "Intellectual Beauty," this hymn 
might be put in our collections of sacred poetry. He was 
really then worshiping God under another name. He devotes 
himself to his service, prays to him for help, blesses him for all 
good, and hopes from him triumph over all evil. 

Symonds, in his "Shelley," observes : 

We have only to read Shelley's "Essay on Christianity" in 
order to perceive what reverent admiration he felt for Jesus, 
and how profoundly he understood the true character of his 
teaching. That work, brief as it is, forms one of the most val- 
uable extant contributions to a sound theology, and is morally 
far in advance of the opinions expressed by many who regard 
themselves as specially qualified to speak on the subject. It 
is certain that, as Christianity passes beyond its mediaeval 
phase, and casts aside the husks of outworn dogmas, it will 
more and more approximate to Shelley's exposition. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 143 

Sapt t ^rrittrig Rwrgafc— A. D. 1792-1848. 
In " Japhet in Search of a Father" occurs this pas- 



"Do you think that a great and good God ever created any 
being for its destruction and eternal misery?" * * * * "Then 
you suppose there is no such thing as eternal punishment ? " 
"Eternal ? No. Punishment there is, but not eternal. * * * 
This is certain, that no one was created to be punished eter- 
nally." 



Iq* |u|tt |utttriitg + — A. D. 1792-1872. 

Lord ! when I seek thy face, I feel 
I am but dust — the sprinkled dew 
Of morning. But the towering will 
That soars to heaven, is heavenly still 
And man, though clay, is spirit, too. 

Yes ! I can feel that, though a clod 
Of the dark vale, there is a sense 
Of better things — the fit abode 
Of something tending up to God — 
A germ of pure intelligence. 

I know not how the eternal hand 

Has moulded man — but this I know, 

That whilst 'mid earth's strange scenes I stand, 

Bright visions of a better land 

Go with me still, wher'er I go. 

And surely dreams so pure, so sweet, 
Friendly to hope and joy and worth, 
Are not the phantoms of deceit, 



14l4: a cloud of witnesses. 

Delusions sent to blind, to cheat 
The weary, wandering sons of earth. 

My God ! we are thine offspring — time 
Is but oar infancy — the earth 
Our cradle — but our home's a clime 
Eternal, sorrowless, sublime — 
Heaven is the country of our birth ! 

The grand hymn, "God is Love, His Mercy 
Brightens," is the flowering of our faith in song. 

Thy sun awakes and sets — the world grows old 
And is renewed again. The seasons flow 
Unchanging in their changes — joy and woe 
Reside in turns — and then we are enrolled 
Among the slumberers of the grave — but Thou, 
To whom past, present, future, are as now, 
Art still the same — still watching — still intent 
On thy high purpose — from the labyrinth vast 
Where good and evil, joy and grief are blent, 
In common fate to perfect — and present 
A future gathered from the checkered past, 
Where bliss shall be predominant — and spread 
Wider and wider — till it shall embrace 
All the great family of the human race, 
And give a crown of light to every head. 



T^tSarn SurcrupH Tpmnm.—A. D. 1794-1835. 

We have somewhere read that Mrs. Hemans' son, 
then residing in this country, affirmed that his mother 
cherished the hope of universal redemption. We have 
been unable to find the testimony. Certainly the 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 145 

spirit of her amiable muse harmonizes with that of 
our faith. 

In his "Kecollections of a Busy Life, " Horace Gree- 
ley quotes the following sonnet as a proof that the 
pure spirit of one of England's best and greatest women 
cherished the hope that the life beyond will amend 
the ills of time : 

O judge in thoughtful tenderness of those 

Who richly dowered for life are called to die, 
Ere the soul's flame, through storms hath won repose. 

In truth's divinest ether, still and high, 
Let their minds' riches claim a trustful sigh; 

Deem them but sad, sweet fragments of a strain, 
First notes of some yet struggling harmony, 

By the strong rush, the crowning joy and pain 
Of many inspirations, met and held 

From its true sphere. Oh, soon it might have swelled 
Majestically forth ! No doubt that he 

Whose touch mysterious may on earth dissolve 
Those links of music, elsewhere will evolve 

Their grand, consummate hymn from passion-gusts 
made free. 



tphtm Mhn Jnjani— A. D. 1794-1878. 

The poit of America exhibits the soul of our reli- 
gion in his perfect poems. He addresses his wife thus : 

How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps 

The disembodied spirits of the dead, 
When all of thee that time could wither, sleeps, 

And perishes among the dust we tread? 
10 



14:6 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain, 
If there I meet thy gentle presence not ; 

Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again 
In thy serenest eyes the tender thought. 

Will not thy own meek heart demand me there? 

That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given ; 
My name on earth was ever in thy prayer, 

Shall it be banished from thy tongue in heaven? 

In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind, 
In the resplendence of that glorious sphere, 

And larger movements of the unfettered mind, 
"Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here? 

The love that lived through all the stormy past, 
And meekly with my harsher nature bore, 

And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last, 
Shall it expire with earth, and be no more? 

A happier lot than mine, and larger light 

Await thee there ; for thou hast bowed thy will, 

In cheerful homage to the rule of right, 
And lovest all, and renderest good for ill. 

Tor me, the sordid cares in which I dwell, 

Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the scroll; 

And wrath has left its scar — that fire of hell 
Has left its frightful scar upon my soul. 

Yet, though thou wears't the glory of the sky, 
Wilt thou not keep the same beloved name, 

The same fair thoughtful brow, and gentle eye, 
Lovelier in heaven's sweet climate, yet the same? 

Shalt thou not teach me in that calmer home, 
The wisdom that I learned so ill in this — 

The wisdom which is love — till I become 
Thy fit companion in the world of bliss ? 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 147 

He becomes entirely definite in his announcement 
of Universalism when he says : 

Each, tie 
Of pure affection shall be knit again; 

Alone shall evil die, 
And sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign. 

His "Lines to a Waterfowl" conclude thus : 

He who from zone to zone 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will guide my steps aright. 

In the "Crowded Street," after surveying the rush- 
ing human torrent, the poet exclaims : 

Each, where his tasks or pleasures call, 
They pass and heed each other not ; 

There is who heeds, who holds them all 
In his large love and boundless thought. 

These struggling tides of life that seem 
In wayward, aimless course to tend, 

Are eddies of the mighty stream 
That rolls to its appointed end. 

And in his last great poem, he thus describes the 
scene of perfection beyond the "Flood of Years" : 

In the room 
Of this grief-shadowed Present there shall be, 
A present in whose reign no grief shall gnaw 
The heart, and never shall a tender tie 
Be broken — in whose reign the eternal change 
That waits on growth and action shall proceed 
With everlasting concord hand in hand. 



148 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Ipfomt Wfom&Z— A. D. 1794-1866. 

In his "Philosophy of Discovery," this great scien- 
tist and divine, who enjoyed the reputation of "possess- 
ing more universal information than any other man 
in England, " says his biographer, thus writes, pp. 389- 
393: 

We are led to assume that there is in God an infinite love 
of man, a creature in a certain degree of a Divine nature. We 
must as a consequence of this,assume that the love of God to man, 
necessarily is, in the end and on the whole, completely and fully 
realized in the history of the world. But what is the complete 
history of the world ? Is it that which consists in the lives of 
men such as we see them between their birth and their death ? 
If the minds or souls of men are alive after the death of the 
body, that future life as well as the present life, belongs to the 
history of the world ; — to that providential history, of which 
the totality, as we have said, must be governed by infinite 
Divine love. And in addition to all other reasons for believ- 
ing that the minds and souls of men do thus survive their pres- 
ent life, is this : — that we thus can conceive, what otherwise 
it is difficult or impossible to conceive, the operation of infin- 
ite love in the whole of the history of mankind. If there be a 
future state in which men's souls are still under the authority 
and direction of the Divine Governor of the world, all that is 
here wanting to complete the scheme of a perfect government 
of intelligent love may thus be applied, — all seeming and par- 
tial evil may be absorbed and extinguished in an ultimate and 
universal good. 

To complete the realization of the idea of justice as an ele- 
ment of the divine administration, there must be a life of man 
after his life in this present world. If man's mind and soul, 
the part of him which is susceptible of happiness and misery, 
survive this present life, and is still subject to the divine 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 149 

administration, the idea of Divine justice may still be. com- 
pletely realized, notwithstanding all that here looks like injus- 
tice or defective justice ; and it belongs to the idea of justice 
to remedy and compensate, not to prevent "wrong. And thus 
by this supposition of a future state of man's existence, we are 
enabled to conceive that, in the whole of the Divine goverment 
of the universe, all seeming injustice and wrong may be finally 
corrected and rectified, in an ultimate and universal establish- 
ment of a reign of perfect righteousness. 



J* §* JstthndL— A. D. 1795-1856. 

This couplet was written by the poet, Percival : 

We send these fond endearments o'er the grave, 
Heaven would be hell, if loved ones were not there. 



Ifaraq Rwtm— A. D. 1796-1859. 

The great American educator thus testifies in a 
letter to his sister : 

Though the whole offspring of the Creator, with the excep- 
tion of one solitary being, were gathered into a heaven of 
unimaginable blessedness, while one solitary being, wide apart 
in some solitary region of immensity, however remote, were 
wedded to immortal pain, even then, just as soon as the holy 
principle of love sprang up in the hearts of the happy assem- 
bly, just so soon would they forget their joy, and forget their 
God, and the whole universe of them, as one spirit, gather 
around and weep over the sufferer. My nature revolts at the 
idea of belonging to a universe in which there is to be never- 
ending anguish. That nature never can be made to look on 
it with composure. * * * * What we learn from books, 



150 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

even what we think we are taught in the Bible, may be a mis- 
take or misapprehension ; but the lessons we learn from our 
own consciousness are the very voice of the Being who created 
us ; and about it can there be any doubt ? 



Ifartfeij QcSn&Sfc— A. D. 1797-1849. 

I need a cleansing change within — 
My life must once again begin ; 
New hope I need, and youth renewed, 
And more than human fortitude, — 
New faith, new love, and strength to cast 
Away the fetters of the past. 

Ah ! why did fabling poets tell 
That Lethe" only flows in hell? 
As if, in truth, there was no river 
Whereby the leper may be clean 
But that which flows, and flows forever, 
And crawls along, unheard, unseen, 
Whence brutish spirits, in contagious shoals, 
Quaff the dull drench of apathetic souls? 

Ah, no ! but Lethe flows aloft 
With lulling murmur, kind and soft, 
As voice which sinners send to heaven 
When first they feel their sins forgiven ; 
Its every drop as bright and clear 
As if indeed it were a tear 
Shed by the lovely Magdalen 
For him that was despised of men. 

It is the only fount of bliss 
In all the human wilderness — 
It is the true Bethesda— solely 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 151 

Endued with healing might, and holy ; 
Not once a year, but evermore — 
Not one, but all men to restore. 



f* <L yivttynvL— A. D. 1797-1854. 

From lines on the death of his wife : 

But, 'tis an old belief 

That on some solemn shore, 
Beyond the sphere of grief, 

Dear friends shall meet once more ; 

Beyond the sphere of time, 

And sin, and fate's control; 
Serene in endless prime 

Of body and of soul. 

That creed I fain would keep, 

That hope I'll not forego ; 
Eternal be the sleep 

Unless to waken so. 



©emit |m%— A. D. 1797-1874. 

Eternal Hell ! No man does and no man can believe it. 
It is untrue if only because human nature is incapable of be- 
lieving it. Moreover, were such a belief possible, it would be 
fatal. Let the American people wake up with it to-morrow, and 
none of them would go to their fields, and none to their shops, 
and none would care for their homes. All interest in the 
things of earth would be dead. The whole nation would be 
struck with paralysis and frozen with horror. Even the begin- 



152 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

nings of such a belief would be too much for the safety of 
the brain ; and every step in that direction is a step toward 
the mad-house. The orthodox preacher of an eternal hell 
would himself go crazy, did he believe his own preaching. 



IHSfaapPtts Jfcrramts*— A. D. 1797. 

This distinguished American jurist, on one occa- 
sion listened to a discourse by an "orthodox" minister, 
and at its close, the preacher asked the lawyer's opin- 
ion of the discourse. "It was a very logical produc- 
tion, " was the answer, "the premises and conclusion 
were perfect," "But," said the divine, "I had under- 
stood that you do not accept the evangelical views of 
the character of God ?" "The character of God ?" said 
the judge, "I supposed you were describing the devil." 



urns !$**♦— A. D. 1798-1845. 

Hood's writings abound with the spirit of our 
faith. Instance his "Ode to Eae Wilson," one of the 
"Holy Willies" who had accused him of profaneness. 
He frankly confesses that he is 

Not one of those self-constituted saints, 

Those pseudo privy-counsellors of God, 

Who write down judgments with a pen hard nibb'd, 

Ushers of Belzebub's black rod, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 153 

Who commend sinners, not to ice thick-ribbed, 
But endless flames, to scorch them up like flax, 
Yet sure of heaven themselves, as if they'd cribb'd 
The impression of St. Peter's keys in wax ! 

And he adds : 

Shun pride, O Eae ! whatever sort beside 
You take in lieu, shun spiritual pride ! 
A pride there is of rank, a pride of birth, 
A pride of learning, and a pride of purse, 
A London pride, — in short, there be on earth 
A host of prides, some better and some worse ; 
But of all prides, since Lucifer's attaint, 
The proudest swells a self -elected saint. 
To picture that cold pride, so harsh and hard, 
Fancy a peacock in a poultry-yard. 
Behold him, in conceited circles sail, 
Strutting and dancing, and now planted stiff, 
In all his pomp of pageantry, as if 
He felt "the eyes of Europe" on his tail! 
"Look here," he cries, (to give him words,) 
"Thou feathered clay, thou scum of birds!" 
Flirting the rustling plumage in her eyes — 
"Look here, thou vile, predestined sinner, 
Doomed to be roasted for a dinner, 
Behold these lovely, variegated dyes ! 
These are the rainbow colors of the skies, 
That heaven has shed upon me con amove — 
A bird of paradise ! A pretty story ! 
I am that saintly bird, thoii paltry chick ! 

Look at my crown of glory ! 
Thou dingy, dirty, drabbled, draggled jill!" 
And off goes Partlet, wriggling from a kick 
"With bleeding scalp, laid open by his bill ! 
That little simile exactly paints, 
How sinners are despised by saints, . . . 
The saints ! the bigots that in public spout, 



154 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Spread phosphorus of zeal on scraps of fustian, 

And go, like walking Lucifers about, 

Mere living bundles of combustion. . . . 

Thrice blessSd rather is the man with whom 

The gracious prodigality of Nature, 

The balm, the bliss, the beauty and the bloom, 

The bounteous Providence in every feature 

Becall the good Creator to his creature ! 

Making all earth a fane, all heaven its dome. 

To his tuned spirit the wild heather bells 

King Sabbath knells ; 

The jubilate of the soaring lark, 

Is chant of clerk ; 

For choir, the thrush, and the gregarious linnet, 

The sod's a cushion for his pious want, 

And consecrated by the heaven within it, 

The sky-blue pool a font ; 
Each cloud-capp'd mountain is a holy altar ; 
An organ breathes in every grove ; 

And the full heart's a psalter, 
Kich in deep hymns of gratitude and love ! 

The "Bridge of Sighs" breathes the very soul of 
universal love and forgiveness. Though 

Perishing gloomily, 
Spurned by contumely, 
Cold inhumanity, 
Burning insanity, 
Into her re st, — 
Yet cross her hands humbly, 
As if praying dumbly, 
Over her breast ! 

Owning her weakness, 
Her evil behavior, 
And leaving, with meekness, 
Her sins to her Savior ! 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 155 

Canon Farrar says of the foregoing passage : 

Here again the Christian poets teach us a truer charity 
than the hard theologians. 

In his prose works, Vol. II., p. 174 : 

Is there anything in common between the fierce, vindic- 
tive Creator, wrathfully consigning the creature he has made 
to everlasting and unutterable torment, as depicted by the 
gloomiest of fanatical sects, and the beneficent Jehovah, 
silently adored by the Quaker as the God of "peace and good- 
mil toward men?" 



Htlonafo diarfq,— A. D. 1798. 

The famous "mad poet, " though he left no proof 
that he cherished the hope of universal redemption, 
gives this admirable statement of the true idea of retri- 
bution : 

How narrow are the bounds of hell, 

Of blood and dust how small a part ! 
The cloister of a forehead's clouded swell, 
The dungeon of a loathing heart. 

The walls of hell may be the human skull — 
The human breast its scorching base ; 

There's a roar within, though man may lull 
Its storms, ere its lightnings cross the face ! 



\txitrt Jdhk.— A. D. 1799-1827. 

We have no idea that the poet of orthodoxy, — 
par excellence — was a Universalist, for most of his 



156 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

poems are nightmares — the very delirium tremens of 
poetry, but he occasionally saw a gleam of light, as 
when he sang : 

Hail, holy love ! thou word that sums all bliss, 
Gives and receives all bliss, fullest when most 
Thou givest ! Spring-head of all felicity, 
Deepest when most is drawn ! Emblem of God ! 
O'erflowing most when greatest numbers drink! 
Essence that binds the uncreated Three, 
Chain that unites creation to its Lord, 
Center to which all being gravitates, 
Eternal, ever-growing, happy love ! 
Enduring all, forgiving all ; 
Instead of law, fulfilling every law. 

Breathe all thy minstrelsy, immortal Harp ! 
Breathe numbers warm with love, while I rehears^ >- 
Delighted theme, resembling most the songs 
"Which, day and night, are sung before the Lamb ! 
Thy praise, O Charity ! thy labors most 
Divine ; thy sympathy with sighs, and tears, 
And groans ; thy great, thy godlike wish, to heal 
All misery, all fortune's wounds, and make 
The soul of every living thing rejoice. 



jhj, % Tfa*^— A. D. 1800. 

Dr. Hase, professor of theology, Jena, Leipsic, 

1870: 

The restoration of every fallen being is an ideal floating 
before the history of the world, and its constant realization is 
conditioned by the moral freedom of all created spirits. — Dog. 
malikip- 478. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 157 

Cfcmmtai Tfmij Itutms^mX— A. D. 1800-1868. 

This eminent Episcopal clergyman and graceful 
poet, is the author of a series of "Sermons in Son- 
nets," several of which we quote : 

Give evil but an end — and all is clear ! 

Make it eternal — all things are obscured ! 

And all that we have thought, felt, wept, endured, 

Worthless. "We feel that e'en if our own tear 

"Were wiped away forever, no true cheer 

Could to our yearning bosoms be secured 

"While we believed that sorrow clung uncured 

To any being we on earth held dear. 

Oh, much doth life the sweet solution want 

Of all made blest in far futurity ! 

Heaven needs it too. Our bosoms yearn and pant 

Rather indeed our God to justify 

Than our own selves. Oh, why then drop the key 

That tunes discordant worlds to harmony ! 



Let me net deem that I was made in vain, 
Or that my being was an accident, 
"Which Fate, in working its sublime intent, 
Not wished to be, to hinder would not deign. 
Each drop uncounted in a storm of rain 
Hath its own mission, and is duly sent 
To its own leaf or blade, not idly spent 
'Mid myriad dimples on the shipless main. 
The very shadow of an insect's mug 
For which the violet cared not while it stayed 
Yet felt the lighter for its vanishing, 
Proved that the sun was shining by its shade ; 
Then can a drop of the eternal spring, 
Shadow of living lights, in vain be made ? 



158 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Our sins from fire a dreadful emblem make 
Of punishment, and woes that never tire ; — 
And yet how friendly — beautiful is fire ! 
Truth, dressed in fable, tells us it did wake 
Man from brute sleep, heaven's bounty to partake, 
And arts, and love, and rapture of the lyre. 
The cottage hearth, the taper's friendly spire, 
Have images to soften hearts that ache. 
Virtuous is fire. The stars give thoughts of love, 
And the sun chaseth ill desires away. 
Fire cleanses too ; by it we gold do prove, 
And precious silver hath its bright assay. 
Why then not deem the Bible's fires mean this — 
Evil all melted, to make way for bliss ? 



The thought that any should have endless woe 

Would cast a shadow on the throne of God, 

And darken heaven. . . From the scarce warm clod 

To seraphs, all him as a Father know ; 

He, all as children. Even with us below 

The one rebellious son more thought and love 

Than all the rest will in a parent move, 

God stirring in us. Then how strong the glow 

Of God's great heart our sorrows to relieve ! 

Could he be blest, beholding sufferings, 

And not their end? His tenderness would grieve 

If even the least of his created things 

Should miss of joy. In its serenity 

God's present happiness proves ours to be. 



Evil ! thou art a necessary good — 

Fountain of Individualities, 

Great tenure, thou, of all existences 

That are not God. . . If rightly understood, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 159 

Thou art the lesson-book, and holy rood 
"Whereby, ascending up sublime degrees, 
"We know, and reconcile, and difference seize, 
And change our earthly for a heavenly mood. 
Ah, who can grieve that man has plucked the fruit 
Of knowledge? . . Scarcely name we Innocence 
The Virtue that is not Experience. 
No ! We our souls divinely must transmute 
Out of the God-led instincts of the brute, 
Into the loftier ways of Providence ! 



Oh no, great God ! We feel thou canst not be 

Spectator or upholder of distress, 

So long, indeed, as it is objectless. 

No ! if thou lookst on sorrow, 'tis to see 

Its benefit and end. If before thee 

One hopeless ill could spread the smallest shroud, 

Oh, wouldst thou not dissolve it as a cloud 

In the mere fervors of thy radiancy ? 

'Tis so ! And thou thy dearest Son didst send, 

That message of a boundless love to make ; 

Not as a mockery — more the heart to rend, 

If all were offered what but few could take ! 

Not as a thing of words — but as a meed, 

Which, like thyself, is truth and love indeed. 



Where is damnation ? — 
Man-woven sadness ! — » 

Hark ! all creation 
Answers in gladness ! 

Sin shall dissolve 

In goodness supernal!— 
Beauty and joy 

Alone are eternal ! 



160 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Jfitomri $atm$ri$ fusty.— A.. D. 1800. 

The New York Tribune, in August, 1880, said: 

Dr. Pusey agrees with Canon Farrar on an important ques- 
tion. He declares that it is not a dogma dejicle that those who 
die in a state of sin cannot be reclaimed hereafter. 

Coming from a Catholic source, this is an impor- 
tant item, indicating the direction of the theological 
breezes in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. 



Ureteric Iratmt — A. D. 1801-1865. 

From the eloquent Swede we might quote pages : 

Even in this life God wills that man shall partake of the 
fulness of this life, but what before all does Christianity say? 
God is love. He will, therefore, never cease to desire the deliv- 
ery of every man ; here, there, in eternity, he will labor for it. 
God is the only principle ever the same, ever active.. Oh ! cer- 
tainly the time will come, when the Son, the eternal Word, 
shall have subdued all to the Father, to the eternal mind ! 

Again : 

Let us, then, hope for all ; the way may be more difficult 
for some natures than for others; but he who is light, and 
good, and eternally consistent, will sometime let his voice be 
heard, and raise them to light and harmony. 

Again : 

* * But now,* wherever evil appears, it comes not as an 
organizing, always as a separating, destroying power. What, 
then, is evil ? In its origin, probably a servant of good, as the 
shadow to the light, but which has wandered from its destina- 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 161 

tion ; a servant who has come to wear his master's clothes, and 
who, disguised in them, seeks to play his part. * * God, as the 
idea of God, as living goodness, must exclude all evil from his 
being. This exclusion, however, supposes the possibility of evil ; 
hence follows a choice, the condition of free will. * * But God, 
the eternally good, the highest love, will he forsake his fallen, his 
wretched child ? Will he do less than an earthly mother for 
her own? O, no; he will never turn away his face; he "will 
seek his child ; he will call him ; he will suffer; he will give his 
heart's blood to win him again, to unite him again to himseK. 
If God lives in holier worlds as a dispenser of blessedness, he 
must live on earth as a reconciler. The hymn of regret and 
homesickness winch has arisen on earth from time immemor- 
ial, — this inward cry, "Come, Lord!" is from everlasting to 
everlasting answered with, "Here, my child !" 

"Here, my child!" — Yes, O my God, in this world, in this 
futurity, thy child believes with his whole heart, and by the 
light of the doctrine of reconciliation, I see life and the world 
arrange themselves before my eyes. If I believe in God, the 
all good, and rich in love, I believe also in the Redeemer of the 
world, believe that the life which the heart seeks truly exists, 
and will gladly impart itself to us. I believe that it constantly 
comes nearer and nearer to us, until it has removed all obsta- 
cles, and unites itself with us fully and intimately. I believe 
that our God is no niggardly giver ; I believe that he will give 
us all his fulness of lif e, — himself ; I believe, that, as eternal 
love, he will suffer for and with us until he lives in us wholly. 
* * When we are again entered into God's eternal order, then 
our life will develop itself in undisturbed freedom and bless- 
edness, and the drama will become, then, the unfolding of 
eternal love in every sphere of life. 

Yes, I will preach of lao-pe, and this in prison, by land and 
on sea. I will ciy it in the ear of the dying malefactor, will 
shout it, even to the other side of death, to the other side of 
the grave, — I will cry it into endless eternity, "Hope ye ! hope 
ye!" 

11 



162 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

frijpnm Jfetaj $ntt%tL— A. D. 1802. 

We translate the following from Lange, the cele- 
brated "orthodox" commentator, (Dogmatik, II., §1294, 
Heidelberg, 1851). It will be a surprise in some quar- 
ters to learn that this great theologian cherishes so 
large a faith : 

Throughout the New Testament the sway of divine grace 
is extolled as illuminating in its might the whole world, by 
Jesus himself, in his prayer, as High Priest. It is not merely Ins 
elect who shall recognize his glory, but the world also, until the 
world as world shall vanish in the contemplation of his glory 
(Jno. xvii : 22-24. See Lange's "Life of Jesus.") The Apostle 
Peter in his second Pentecostal speech teaches, certainly not the 
restitution of all things, but yet without doubt the realization of 
all the words which God has ever spoken, and therefore, par- 
ticularly, of all divine promises. The apostle Paid closes his 
discussion of "Predestination" with the words, "God hath con- 
cluded all in unbelief that he might have mercy upon ail" (Kom. 
xi : 32), and breaks out into the song of praise, "Of him, thro' 
him and to him are all things." His declaration that at the 
name of Jesus every knee shall bow, may of course be explained 
away to this — that a portion of men and of spirits shall be 
compelled against their will to bend the knee. But that the 
apostle intended such a meaning becomes very improbable 
when he adds, "Every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ 
is Lord." For here we must remember his canon, "No man 
can call Jesus Lord but by the Holy Ghost." The mightiest 
word he has spoken is that concerning the destruction of death 
(I. Cor. xv : 26). Here, manifestly, the reference is to a new 
change, which takes place away beyond the general judgment. 
If death is wholly destroyed, then along with it must sin also 
be destroyed, for sin is death in essence. Yea, it is expressly 
announced that at some future time Christ shall have completed 
his work, and that then God shall be all in all. The Apostle 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 163 

Peter has told us the means by which Christ reaches this goal 
(I. Peter 4 : 6). The Apocalypse, however, says expressly that 
even the leaves of the tree of life which stand by the river of 
salvation serve for the healing of the heathen, and that there 
shall be no more any accursed thing. 

The Apostle Paul has precisely expressed the special idea 
and purpose of excommunication from the church (I. Cor. v); 
— evidently a man may be given over to Satan that his soul 
may be saved. Nothing, then, seems more natural than that 
the purpose of the great and the greatest excommunication 
should be in the same line with that of the lesser. That the 
divine punishments even beyond the grave and deep in the 
realm of death have a tendency to conversion although they 
glorify God's righteousness and guard his rights, Peter has 
quite decisively shown. How, then, can it be regarded as a 
glorifying of God when the divine punishments which are 
awarded to the lost are considered solely as inflictions of ven- 
geance, or of retribution ? In such a case these punishments 
are to be no more punishment in the full meaning of the word, 
and in this penal region justice abandoned by grace is no more 
to stimulate, but only to kill. If men will separate in this way 
justice from grace they make a separation in God, and if in 
consequence they assign to justice through an endless eternity 
the office of tormenting in hell, so to speak, in a wholly isola- 
ted position, half severed from the whole living God, and sun- 
dered from grace and mercy, then in very deed they assign to 
justice a most painful office. 

But God is everywhere present as God, even in hell. And 
if one acknowledges the article, — "I believe in God Almighty," 
one must feel that there is reference to the almightiness of his 
love also. But if his almightiness has eternal sway, it has also 
a corresponding eternal operation. People, therefore, should 
not think that they are zealous for the glory of God, when in 
spirit they bind man endlessly to the evil consequences of his 
unbelief in this world, and then endlessly bind the justice 
of God by itself alone to the endlessly bound man. In this 
case people are again in danger of making Time, the ancient 
Chronos, God, or at least the lost man's dying hour in which 



164 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

he abandoned hope forever. But God is greater than Time, 
and greater than the human heart. Certainly the human heart 
has in its freedom gained the power, even in its weakness, to 
carry on throughout the aeons war with God to its own dam- 
nation. But the freedom of God stretches beyond the free- 
dom of man, the freedom of the universe ; and away there where 
the farthest aeons of human rebellion are running out, the aeon 
of God begins ever anew. 

But God reigns in this aeon in his eternal might. As the 
One, he will reflect himself in the unified organism of the 
spiritual world ; and as the infinitely rich, in an organism which 
forms a kingdom of kingdoms, of many kingdoms, and whose 
Prince in every thought illuminates the whole organization. 
As the Lord of Kindness (Huld) God will brighten up out of 
its darkened condition his whole Kosmos till it bo a full man- 
ifestation of the eternal beauty of his nature. Ac: the Holy, 
he will bring it to appeax in the perfected ideality of his spir- 
itual sway. As the Kighteous, he strives with fallen spirits, 
to throw them back on their conscience, that in their con- 
science they may be judged, destroyed and made alive again. 
And as he will bring them home to eternal right, so will he 
also have himself recognized by them in his eternal righteous- 
ness. For so long as they themselves are perverted, even the 
image of God in the perverted mirror of their consciousness 
seems a perverted thing. The perfect manifestation of the 
glory of God in his creature therefore demands the perf ection 
of the world's mirror — consciousness. As the Loving One, also, 
he will see the personalities in that condition in which he 
planted them, and they shall utter his name as he utters theirs, 
in the reciprocal knowledge of personal life. 

This sway of God demands an eternity, but for an eter- 
nity he does not lack ; he himself is the Eternal. But that he is 
certain of his goal is to us made just as certain by the sway of 
Christ lasting after the final judgment, across the aeons. He 
will destroy death as the last enemy. But how could he destroy 
death without destroying sin, which is the essential death, — the 
seed of death ? 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 165 

ft. 6. % lling. 

Like most German theologians, Kling cherished 
the "eternal hope" : 

Shall we then mistake, if we imagine that, even in the 
extra mundane sphere, that there are also fallen beings yet 
capable of salvation, and that into this sphere, whence came 
temptation and ruin into our race, there shall in return go 
forth blessed agencies of deliverance from this very race ? 
Lange's Commentary on I. Cor., vi:2,p. 126. 



Ja^in &nm 8p>, 

In one of her New York letters, this gifted woman 
writes : 

But through this feeling arose the clear voice of Hope 
proclaiming that the tigers and suakes within man would finally 
be subdued, when this process is completed, man, being at 
peace with himself, will be in harmony with Nature, through 
the divine law of attraction. 

Let spirit change forms as it will, I know that nothing is 
really lost. The human soul contains within itself the uni- 
verse. If the stars are blotted out, and the heavens rolled up 
as a scroll, they are not lost. 

If men applied half as much common sense to their theo- 
logical investigations as they do to every other subject, they 
could not worship a God, who, having filled this world with 
millions of his children, would finally consign them all to eter- 
nal destruction, except a few who could be induced to believe 
in very difficult and doubtful explanations of prophecies, 
handed down to us through the long lapse of ages. 



166 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

In her "Aspirations of the World," last lines of the 
book: 

Let lis all give each other cheerful assurance that we are 
all being guided through devious paths homeward by the uni- 
versal Father. 



farrM fljarfiitam*— A. D. 1802-1876. 

Here are a few extracts from one of the most 
gifted women of modern times. In her old age she 
became a professed atheist. It seems that she occu- 
pied the same position earlier in life : 

Here, where I once doubted whether I had a Maker, and 
whether, if there were such an one, men did anything but mock 
themselves in calling him Father, are the best witnesses of 
my avowal that I have found these doubts to be the result of 
human creeds, as far as they are impious, and that I have 
reached, through the very severity of the discipline, a refuge 
whence I can never again be driven forth, into the chaos of the 
elements, out of which my new life has been framed. 

Had Doddridge known God only as a tender Father, 
Christ only as his holy and approved messenger, sin and sor- 
row as finite and limited influences, holiness and peace as the 
natural and ultimate elements of being, how serene, how 
exalted might have been his mortal lif e ! 

Here may we best reconcile our minds to the approach of 
the night of death, and exalt our conceptions of the eternal 
morning which shall unclose every eye, and restore the long 
suspended energies of every soul. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 167 

IpHtera IregjiitL— A. D. 1802-1839. 

This poet significantly asks, if we fail to find our 
loved ones, all of them, hereafter, will not heaven be 
impossible ? 

If yon bright stars, which gem the night, 

Be each a blissful dwelling sphere, 
Where kindred spirits reunite, 

Whom death has torn asunder here ; 

How sweet it were at once to die, 

And leave this blighted orb afar, 
Mixt soul and soul to cleave the sky, 

And soar away from star to star. 

But oh ! how dark, and drear, and lone, 
Would seem the brightest world of bliss, 

If wandering through each radiant zone, 
We failed to find the loved of this ! 



ma* •*%•%— A. D. 1803-1873. 

In his "Life" he says : 

St. John uses a very broad expression. "Jesus Christ," 
he says, "is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, 
but also for the sins of the whole world." "The whole world. 
Ah," some would say, "that is dangerous language." It is God's 
language — John speaking as he was moved by the Holy Ghost. 
It throws a zone of mercy around the world. Perish the hand 
that would narrow it by a hand's breadth. 



168 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

\ «[♦ Jtemm— A. D. 1803. 

Emerson employs the following language in an 
article on the system of Swedenborg : 

Another dogma, growing out of this pernicious theolog- 
ical limitation, is this Inferno. Swedenborg has devils. Evil, 
according to old philosophers, is good in the making. That 
pure malignity can exist is the extreme proposition of unbe- 
lief. It is not to be entertained by a rational agent ; it is athe- 
ism ; it is the last profanation. Euripides rightly said, — 

Goodness and being in the Gods are one, 

He who imputes ill to them makes them none. 

To what a painful perversion had Gothic theology arrived, 
that Swendenborg admitted no conversion for evil spirits! 
But the divine effort is never relaxed ; the carrion in the sun 
will convert itself to grass and flowers ; and man, though in 
brothels or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good 
and true. Burns, with the wild humor of his apostrophe to 
"poor old Nickie Ben," 

O wad ye tak' a thought, and mend ! 

has the advantage of the vindictive theologian. Everything 
is superficial, and perishes, but love and truth only. The 
largest is always the truest sentiment, and we feel the more 
generous spirit of the Indian Yishnu, "I am the same to all 
mankind. There is not one who is worthy of my love or hatred. " 



Jfelpjp Jltttmg* 

This distinguished bishop of Argyll and the Isles 
— "the brightest and ablest of the Scotch prelates, " 
according to Canon Farrar — says : 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 169 

Unless this (the final restitution of all souls to God) be 
held as a matter of faith, and not as a speculative dogma, it is 
practically valueless. With me this final victory is not a mat- 
ter of speculation at all, but of positive faith ; and to disbelieve 
it would be for me to cease altogether either to trust or to wor- 
ship God. 



terjij |mtk— A. D. 1804-1876. 

Amantine Lucille Aurore Dudevand (nee Dupin). 
This great genius says : 

L'Eglise Eomaine s'est porte le dernier coup; elle a 
consomme son suicide le jour on elle a fait Dieu implacable et 
la damnation eternelle. — Spiridion, p. 302. 

(The Romish church has dealt itself its death-blow. It con- 
summated its own suicide when it made God implacable and 
damnation eternal.) 



^itumrt Jt$m gttkt^— A. D. 1804-1872. 

The distinguished novelist of England is author 
of this eloquent and truthful passage : 

I cannot believe that earth is man's abiding place. It can- 
not be that our life is cast up by the ocean of eternity to float 
a moment upon its waves and sink into nothingness ! Else, 
why is it that the aspirations which leap like angels from the 
temple of our hearts, are forever wandering about unsatisfied ? 
"Why is it that the rainbow and the cloud come over us with a 
beauty that is not of earth, then pass off, and leave us to muse 
upon their faded loveliness ? Why is it that the stars who hold 



170 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

their festival around the midnight throne, are set above the 
grasp of our limited faculties, forever mocking us with their 
unapproachable glory? And, finally, why is it that bright 
forms of human beauty are presented to our view, and then 
taken from us, leaving the thousand streams of our affections 
to flow back in Alpine torrents upon our heart ? We are born 
for a higher destiny than that of earth ; there is a realm where 
rainbows never fade ; where the stars will be out before us, like 
islets that slumber on the ocean ; and where the beings that 
pass before us like shadows, will stay in our presence forever ! 



Not in the world without, but that within, 

Eevealed, not instinct — soul from sense can win ! 

And where the Natural halts, where cramped, confined, 

The seen horizon bounds the baffled mind, 

The Inspired begins — the onward march is given ; 

Bridging all space, nor ending ev'n in heaven ! 

There, veiled on earth, we mark divinely clear, 

Duty and end — the There explains the Here ! 

We see the link that binds the future band, 

Foeman with foeman gliding hand in hand ; 

And feel that Hate is but an hour's — the Son 

Of earth, to perish when the earth is done — 

But Love eternal ; and we turn below, 

To hail the brother where we loathed the foe ; 

There, in the soft and beautiful Belief, 

Flows the true Lethe" for the lips of Grief; 

There, Penury, Hunger, Misery, cast their eyes, — 

How soon the bright Republic of the Skies ! 

There, Love, heart-broken, sees prepared the bower, 

And hears the bridal step, and waits the nuptial hour ! 

There, smiles the mother, we have wept ! there bloom 

Again the buds "asleep within the tomb; 

There, o'er bright gates inscribed, "No more to part," 

Soul springs to soul, and heart unites to heart ! 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 171 

So wonderful in equalizing all states and all times in the 
varying tide of life, are these two rulers yet levellers of man- 
kind, Hope and Custom, that the very idea of an eternal pun- 
ishment includes that of an utter alteration of the whole mechan- 
ism of the soul in its human state ; and no effort of an imagin- 
ation, assisted by past experience, can conceive a state of torture 
which custom can never blunt, and from which the chainless 
and immaterial spirit can never be beguiled into even a momen- 
tary escape. 



^ni\mte fatt%nn>.— A. D. 1804-1864. 

In the Atlantic Magazine, speaking of the squalid 
and degraded poor of a great English city, Hawthorne 
observes : 

Unless these slime-clogged nostrils can be made capable 
of inhaling celestial air, I know not how the purest and most 
intellectual of us can reasonably expect ever to taste a breath 
of it. The whole question of eternity is staked here. If a single 
one of these little ones be lost, the world is lost. 



Dart? fmmit*— A. D. 1804. 

Mary Howitt, on the authority of Eev. A. C. 
Thomas, was a Universalist. So was William. Woman 
rarely defends the blasphemous errors of the church. 
What tender humanities and kind gentleness shine 
from the pages of Mrs. Heman's works, — the very soul 
of Universalism. Mary Howitt says : 



172 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Yes, than earth's mightiest mightier, 
O Grave, thou hast thy vanquisher ! 
Long in thy night was man forlorn, 
Long didst thou laugh his hope to scorn ; 
Vainly Philosophy might dream; — 
Her light was but the meteor gleam, 
Till rose the conqueror of Death, 
The humble man of Nazareth ; 
He stood between us and despair ; 
He bore, and gave us strength to bear ; 
The mysteries of the grave unsealed, 
Our glorious destiny revealed ; 
Nor sage nor bard may comprehend 
The heaven of rest to which we tend. 
Our home is not this mortal clime ; 
Our life hath not its bounds in time ; 
And death is but the cloud that lies 
Between our souls and paradise. 



.f. f> IfitP, jg&J.— A. D. 1804. 

In the vast heavens, as well as among phenomena around 
us, all things are in a state of change and progress ; here, too, 
on the sky, in splendid hieroglyphics, the truth is inscribed, 
that the grandest forms of present being are only germs swell- 
ing and bursting with a life to come ! And if the universal 
fabric is thus fixed and constructed, shall aught that it contains 
be tin-upheld by the same preserving law? Is annihilation a 
possibility real or virtual — the stoppage of the career of any 
advancing being t while hospitable infinitude remains? No! 
let the night fall ; it prepares a dawn when man's weariness 
shall have ceased, and his soul be refreshed and restored. To 
come ! To every creature these are words of \\o-pe spoken in 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 173 

organ tone; our hearts suggest them, and the stars repeat 
them, and through the infinite aspiration wings its way rejoic- 
ingly, as an eagle following the sun. — The Architecture of the 
Heavens. 



This learned and brilliant writer thus speaks in 
the Westminster Review for April, 1850 : 

No man who would hesitate to put Channing on the wheel, 
and object to burn Mrs. Fry, feeling that his reluctance comes 
from a good heart, can believe that God will do these tilings 
on a scale more terrible. 

It requires indeed no great insight into character to dis- 
cover that any reality in this eternal curse and penalty has 
for some time ceased. In proposing to rescue men from it, the 
church makes an offer which no one cares to accept. Have our 
lay readers ever practically met with a person — not under 
remorse for actual heinous sin, who wanted to be delivered 
from eternal torment ? If ever a man does really apprehend such 
a thing for himself, and wring his hands and fix his eye in wild 
despair, how do we deal with him? Do we praise the clearness 
of his moral diagnosis and the logic of his orthodoxy ? do we 
refer him to the font of baptism, or the keys for absolution ? 
No, we send him to the physician rather than to the priest ; we 
put cold sponges on his head, and bid his friends look after 
him. Nor does this doctrine any better bear application to the 
person's around us than to ourselves. If we sometimes act and 
speak by it, we never feel and rarely think of it. Who ever 
knew a mother to despair of her unbaptized and departed 
child? Let it only be considered what is the scene, what 
is the perspective, before her imagination, if she be at once 
sound and sincere in the faith; and it must be owned that even 



174 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

her most passionate grief never rises to the pitch of such pierc- 
ing shrieks as she would hurl into the place of unutterable 
agony. The whole conduct and demeanor of the very persons 
who defend this doctrine afford the clearest proof that it is 
incredible. If we apply to it such tests of experience as would 
suffice in other cases, we produce results whose startling look 
distracts the attention from their logical consequentially ; and 
when we demand from men simple accordance with their pro- 
fession, the thing itself is so impossible that we are apt to 
seem unreasonable, and become charged with the very extrav- 
agance which we impute. It is, however, notorious that a large 
number, even of the clergy, are fully conscious of their unbe- 
lief in this doctrine ; and among the educated laity, the impres- 
sion is general that no one, except here and there a dull cur- 
ate or a pugnacious bishop, is sincere in his assent to it. 



fmts S^mlmtt JLnUv$m>— A. D. 1805-1875. 

In the "True Story of my Life," he says : 

Yet it is not so hard as people deem 

To see their souls' beloved from them riven ; 

God has their dear ones, and in death they seem 
To form a bridge which leads them up to heaven. 

Again, he says : 

My whole life, the bright as well as the gloomy days, led 
to the best. It is like a voyage to some known point, — I stand 
at the rudder, I have chosen my path — but God rules the storm 
and the sea. He niay direct it otherwise ; and then happen 
what may, it will be the best for me. This faith is firmly planted 
in my breast, and makes me happy. 

He declares : 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 175 

I received gladly, both with feeling and understanding, 
the doctrine that God is love ; everything which opposes this 
— a burning hell, therefore, whose fire endures forever — I could 
not recognize. 



fdpt JMnarf iill— A. D. 1806. 

This distinguished skeptic, though no Universal- 
ist, makes this declaration, to which most readers of 
this volume will fully assent : 

If God will send me to hell for not loving a Being, many 
of whose traits are unlovely and abhorrent to my soul, then to 
hell I will go. 



Mr. Street resides in Belfast, Ireland. He says : 

We believe that all punishment, whether in this world or 
that which is to come, is designed by a wise and merciful God, 
for the reformation and restoration of the sinner ; that every 
sin will receive its due punishment ; that it must be cleansed 
away even as by fire ; that it must be thoroughly eradicated 
from every soul throughout the universe before it can be said 
that Christ has subdued all things unto himself, and God become 
all in all. We believe the time will come when holiness will 
smile serenely above the grave of sin; when the dark lines 
will be chased from the moral landscape ; when the sinner will 
have repented of every sin, and become purified by his chas- 



176 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

tisement ; when the gates of Hades will be torn down, and the 
gloomy caverns of sin swept and garnished and glorified; 
when the smile of the All-Loving One will irradiate the coun- 
tenance of every soul he has created ; when the universe will 
be glorious with light and love ; and eternal peace and joy will 
smile on all the children of God. 



Bev. T. Latham, of Bramfield, England, observes : 

When the advocates of endless punishment have succeeded 
in proving God a God without goodness, a Father without, 
compassion, a weak, a wavering, a false, a fickle, a changing, a, 
disappointing, and a disappointed Deity; when they have 
proved Christ a useless, a worthless, an impotent, and merely 
a nominal Savior and restorer of the world; when they have 
proved the promises false, and made the Bible a mere fiction 
from beginning to end, they may then boast that they have 
established the horrible doctrine of eternal torments, and over- 
thrown the final restoration of all mankind. And they may also 
at the same time prove the falsehood of the following state- 
ment, made by an eminent dignitary of the Church of Eng- 
land. [Bishop Newton in his "Dissertations on the Final State 
of Mankind."] " 'Known unto God are all his works from the 
beginning of the world.' He foresees what courses his rational 
creatures will take — their beginning, their progress, and their 
end, and nothing can be more contrary to the Divine Nature 
and attributes, than for a God all-wise, all-good, all-powerful, 
and all-perfect, to bestow existence on any being whose destiny 
he foreknew, and fore'knows must terminate in wretchedness 
and misery, without respite or end. His goodness could never 
give birth to any one being, and much less to numberless beings 
whose end he foresaw would be irretrievable misery ; nor could 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 177 

even his justice for short-lived transgressions, inflict everlast- 
ing punishment. Imagine a creature, nay, numberless creat- 
ures, produced out of nothing, and, therefore, guilty of no prior 
offence, sent into this world of frailty, which it is well known 
beforehand that they will so use as to abuse it, and then, for 
the excesses of a few years, delivered over to torments of end- 
less ages, without the least hope or possibility of relaxation or 
redemption. Imagine it you may, but you can never seriously 
believe it. The thought is shocking even to human nature, 
and how much more abhorrent then it must be to the Divine 
Perfections? God must have made all his creatures finally to 
be happy ; he could never make any whose end he foreknew 
would be misery everlasting. 

"God is love; infinite benevolence alone prompted him to 
action, and infinite benevolence combined with unerring wis- 
dom, and supported by irresistible power, will infallibly accom- 
plish its purpose in the best possible manner. " 

With these views of the subject, then, till better views are 
given, let us joy and rejoice in the Lord, and give thanks at 
the remembrance of his holiness, faithfulness, goodness, jus- 
tice, love, mercy and kindness, which all combine, with every 
perf ection of his nature, to rescue and restore all his erring off- 
spring from all error, and vice, and to bring them finally to 
inherit purity, peace, and a happy immortality. 



This epitaph on an infant, sufficiently condemns 
the absurd idea of native human depravity : 

He took the cup of life to sip, 

But bitter 'twas to drain ; 
He put it meekly from his lip, 

And went to sleep again. 

12 



178 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

imt&tm— A. D. 1806. 



At the Peace Congress at Frankf ort-on-the-Maine, 
in 1850, the compiler of these pages heard the great 
French journalist say : 

The human race began in a "unity, is governed as a unity, 
and must end in a unity. 



i*fe$ Jhm%— A. D. 1806. 



In vain, in vain I turn the well known pages 

For some authority, however brief, 

For the hard doctrines which have been for ages 

The substance of the Puritan's belief . 

Father, forgive me, if with human blindness 

I cannot see what may be plain to them; 

Thy law to me is one of sacred kindness — 

Thy love seems life's one priceless diadem.. 

The time will surely come when not in vain 

Shall all thy children struggle with the wrong, 

When angel forms shall walk the earth again, 

And heavenly symphonies shall join with human song. 

Then shall we learn, when sin lies cold and dumb, 

The meaning of Christ's prayer, "Thy kingdom come." 



If. f, ipis.— A. D. 1806-1867. 

Oh, if we are not bitterly deceived — 
If this familiar spirit that communes 
"With yours this hour— that has the power to search 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 179 

All things but its own compass — is a spark 

Struck from the burning essence of its God — 

If, as we dream, in every radiant star 

"We see a shining gate through which the soul, 

In its degrees of being, will ascend — 

If, when these weary organs drop away, 

We shall forget their uses and commune 

With angels and each other, as the stars 

Mingle their light, in silence and in love — 

What is this fleshly fetter of a day 

That we should bind it with immortal flowers ! 

How do we ever gaze upon the sky, 

And watch the lark soar up till he is lost, 

And turn to our poor perishing dreams away, 

Without one tear for our imprisoned wings ! 



fdjpt JMarlittg*— A. D. 1806-1844, 

Still prayers are strong, and God is good ; 

Man is not made for endless ill ; 
Dear sprite ! my soul's tormented mood 

Has yet a hope thou canst not kill. 

Repentance clothes in grass and flowers 
The grave in which the past was laid; 

And close to Faith's old minster towers 
The cross lights up the ghostly shade. 

Around its foot the shapes of fear, 
Whose eyes my weaker heart appall 

As sister suppliants thrill the ear 
With cries that loud for mercy call. 



180 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Thou, God, wilt hear ! Thy pangs are meant 
To heal the spirit, not destroy ; 

And what may seem for vengeance sent, 
"When thou commandest, works for joy. 



In storm, and flood, and all decays of time, 
In hunger, plagues, and man-devouring war ; 

In all the boundless tracts of inward crime — 
In selfish hates, and lusts that deepliest mar, 

In lazy dreams that clog each task subhme, 
In loveless doubts of truth's unsecting star; 

In all — thy spirit will not cease to brood 

With vital strength, unfolding all to good. 

Fair sight it is, and med'cinal for man, 

To see thy guidance lead the human breast; 

In life's unopen germ behold thy plan, 

Till 'mid the ripened soul it stands confest; 

From impulse too minute for us to scan, 

Awakening sense with love and purpose blest ; 

And through confusion, error, trial, grief, 

Maturing reason, conscience, calm belief . 

This to have known, my soul, be thankful thou ! — 
This clear, ideal form of endless good, 

Which casts around the adoring learner's brow 
The ray that marks man's holiest brotherhood. 

Thus e'en from guilt's deep course and slavish vow, 
And dreams whereby the light was long withstood; 

Thee, Lord ! whose mind is rule supreme to all, 

Unveiled we see, and hail thy wisdom's call. 



Bold is the life, and deep and vast in man — 
A flood of being poured unchecked from thee, 

To thee returned by thy unfailing plan, 

When tried and trained thy will unveiled to see. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 181 

The spirit leaves the body's wondrous frame — 
That frame itse]f a world of strength and skill, 

The noble inmate new abodes will claim, 
In every change to thee aspiring still. 

Although from darkness born to darkness fled, 
"We know that light beyond surrounds the whole, 

The man survives though the weird corpse be dead, 
And he who dooms the flesh redeems the soul. 



$ri(ftt % J). JSattriq-— A. D. 1806-1872. 

The celebrated chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, and 
friend of Tennyson, has long been known as a defender 
of "the larger hope." In his "Unity of the New Tes- 
tament, " p. 257, he says of the language of Paul in 
Kom. v : 

The justification is co-extensive with the condemnation; 
if all shared in one, all share in the other. ... If only a cer- 
tain portion of the human race had partaken of the sin of 
Adam, only a certain portion had partaken of the justification 
of Christ. But St. Paul affirms all to have been involved in 
one, all to be included in the other. . . . Since I look upon 
them (Christ's death and resurrection,) as revelations of the 
Son of God in whom all things had stood from the first, in 
whom God had looked upon his creature Man from the first, 
I give thanks for them as the most wonderful and blessed 
exposition of God's order in the universe, of man's disorder 
and transgression, of the method by which one has been used 
for the removal and cure of the other. 

See Tennyson's "Sonnet to F. D. M." 



182 A CLOUD OP WITNESSES. 

!$♦ % |fUttgW{uut + — A. D. 1807. 

There are many choice passages in the works of 
this elegant poet, which indicate that he agrees with 
the larger part of the denomination to which he is 
understood to belong, in rejecting the idea of the tri- 
umph of evil. He tells us, in the "Golden Legend".: 

It is Lucifer, 

The Son of Mystery; 
And since God suffers him to be, 
He, too, is God's minister, 
And labors for some good, 
By us not understood ! 



The grave itself is but a covered bridge, 
Leading from light to light thro' a brief darkness. 



Some men there are, I have known such, who think 

That the two worlds — the seen and the unseen, 

The world of matter and the world of spirit, — 

Are like the hemispheres upon our maps, 

And touch each other only at a point. 

But these two worlds were not divided thus, 

Save for the purposes of common speech. 

They form one globe, on which the parted seas 

Alljflow together and are intermingled, 

"While the great continents remain distinct. 

"The Keaper and the Flowers," "Eesignation," 
and many of the great poet's lines are saturated by 
the very spirit of universal love and redemption. 

There is no death ! what seems so is transition, 

This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 

Whose portal we call Death. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 183 

Jfotp^sp Wvmfy—A. D. 1807, 

Dean Trench was not a Universalist, but these 
lines rise into the altitude of the Universal faith : 

I say to thee, do thou repeat 

To the first man thou mayest meet, 

In lane, highway, or open street, 

That he, and we, and all men move 

Under a canopy of love 

As broad as the blue sky above. 

And, — ere thou leave him, — say thou this 
Yet one word more, — they only miss 
The winning of that final bliss, 

"Who will not count it true, that love, 
Blessing, not cursing, rules above — 
And that in it we live and move. 

And one thing farther make him know, 
That to believe these things are so, 
This firm faith never to forego, — 

Despite of all that seems at strife 
With blessing — all with curses rife — 
That this is blessing — this is life ! 



God's dealings still are love, — his chastenings are alone 
Love, now compelled to take an altered, louder tone. 
Mark how there still has run, enwoven from above, 
Through thy life's darkest woof, the golden thread of love. 



184 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

fript Smtfeaf IBpti^*— A. D. 1807. 

The spirit of our faith is the inspiration of Whit- 
tier's strains, and the animating impulse of his life. 
Once — in 1 865 — at his home, we listened to an ani- 
mated conversation between the poet and a guest who 
was vindictive in her expressions against the rebels of 
the South. In his gentlest manner the poet said, 
"Thee is too orthodox." The woman replied, "But 
Andersonville must be avenged." To which Whittier 
made answer, "Andersonville was avenged when slav- 
ery was abolished." So sin will be avenged when the 
sinner shall have been converted, — and not till then. 

Among the earliest of the utterances of New Eng- 
land's poet are these words from the "Stranger in 
Lowell" : 

In the economy of God, no effort, however small, put forth 
for the right cause, fails of its effect. No voice, however feeble, 
lifted up for Truth, ever dies amidst the confused noises of 
Time. Through discords of Sin and Sorrow, Pain and Wrong, it 
rises a deathless melody, whose notes of wailing are hereafter 
to be changed to those of triumph as they blend with the great 
harmony of a reconciled universe. 

His poetry is pervaded by the very spirit of our 
faith. "The Lost Soul, " and "Eternal Goodness, " are 
full of it. The utter impossibility that one soul can 
be happy, while others are wailing in endless torture, 
is set forth in "Divine Compassion," which asks: 

Is heaven so high 

That pity cannot breathe its air? 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 185 

Its happy eyes forever dry, 
Its holy lips without a prayer? 
My God, my God, if thither led 
By thy free grace unmerited, 
No crown, no palm be mine, but let me keep 
A heart that still can feel, and eyes that still can weep. 

From the "Lost Soul": 

Through sins of sense, perversities of will, 

Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame and ill, 

Thy pitying eye is on thy creature still. 

"Wilt thou not make, eternal Source and Goal, 
In thy long years lif e's broken circle whole, 
And change to praise the cry of a lost soul ? 

In "The Grave by the Lake, "the poet asks what 
has become of all the dead : 

Desert-smothered caravan, 
Knee-deep dust that once was man, 
Battle-trenches ghastly piled, 
Ocean-floors with white bones tiled, 
Crowded tomb and mounded sod, — 
***** * 

Where be now these silent hosts ? 
Where the camping-ground of ghosts ? 
Where the spectral conscripts led 
To the white tents of the dead ? 
What stjange shore or chartless sea 
Holds the awful mystery ? 

And the poet's answer is, 

Cast on God thy care for these; 
Trust him if thy sight be dim ; 
Doubt for them is doubt of him. 



186 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Still thy love, O Christ arisen, 
Yearns to reach these souls in prison, 
Through all depths of sin and loss 
Drops the plummet of thy cross ! 
Never yet abyss was found 
Deeper than that cross could sound ! 
Deep below as high above 
Sweeps the circle of God's love ! 

"The Brother of Mercy" prefers to be among the 
damned, rather than to sit unmoved in heaven. He 
truly says : 

If one goes to heaven without a heart, 

God knows he leaves behind his better part. 

I love my fellow-men ; the worst I know 

I would do good to. Will death change me, so 

That I shall sit among the lazy saints, 

Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints 

Of souls that suffer ? 

Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought be sin !) 

The world of pain were better, if therein 

One's heart might still be human, and desires 

Of natural pity drop upon its fires 

Some cooling tears. 

And the brother hears a voice assuring him : 

Never fear ! 
For heaven is love, as God himself is love ; 
Thy work below shall be thy work above ! 

"The Eternal Goodness" is the Universalist's 
church hymn. Addressing those who cherish a par- 
tial faith, he says : . 

I trace your lines of argument ; 
Your logic linked and strong, 
I weigh as one who dreads dissent, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 187 

And fears a doubt as wrong. 
But still my human hands are weak 

To hold your iron creeds ; 
Against the words ye bid me speak, 

My heart within me pleads. 
Who fathoms the Eternal thought ? 

Who talks of scheme and plan ? 
The Lord is God, he needeth not 

The poor device of man. 
I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground 

Ye tread with boldness shod, — 
I dare not fix with mete and bound 

The love and power of God. 
Ye praise his justice ; even such 

His pitying love I deem. 
Ye seek a king; I fain would touch 

The robe that hath no seam. 
Ye see the curse which overbroods 

A world of pain and loss; 
I hear our Lord's beatitudes 

And prayer upon the cross. 
I see the wrong that round me lies, 

I feel the guilt within ; 
I hear, with groan and travail cries, 

The world confess its sin. 
Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 

And tossed by storm and flood, 
To one fixed stake my spirit clings, — 

I know that God is good ! 
Not mine to look where cherubim 

And seraphs may not see, 
But nothing can be good in him, 

Which evil is in me. 
The wrong that pains my soul below, 

I dare not throne above ; 
I know not of his hate, — I know 

His goodness and his love. 



188 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

I know not what the future hath 

Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 

His mercy underlies. 
And so beside the silent sea 

I wait the muffled oar ; 
No harm from him can come to me 

On ocean or on shore. 
I know not where his islands lift 

Their fronded palms in air; 
I only know I cannot drift 

Beyond his love and care. 
O brothers ! if my faith is vain, 

If hopes like these betray, 
Pray for me that my feet may gain 

The sure and safer way. 
And thou, O Lord ! by whom are seen 

Thy creatures as they be, 
Forgive me if too close I lean 

My human heart on thee. 

In the same sublime spirit is "Tauler." The 
preacher is pondering the mysteries of life, when a 
stranger explains them to him in the light of the 
Divine Love. The preacher inquires : 

What if God's will consign thee hence to hell ? 
"Then," said the stranger, cheerily, "be it so. 
"What hell may be I know not ; this I know — 
I cannot lose the presence of the Lord : 
One arm, Humility, takes hold upon 
His dear Humanity; the other, Love, 
Clasps his Divinity. So, where I go 
He goes ; and better fire- walled hell with him, 
Than golden-gated Paradise without." 
Tears sprang in Tauler's eyes. A sudden light 
Like the first ray which fell on chaos, clove 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 189 

Apart the shadow wherein he had walked 
Darkly at noon. 

****** 

As he looked upward and saw the spire of the 
Strasburg Cathedral, its "stone lace-work" glowing in 
sunlight, while its base lay in gloomy shadow, he said : 

Behold 
The stranger's faith made plain before my eyes ! 
As yonder tower outstretches to the earth 
The dark triangle of its shade alone 
When the bright day is shining on its top, 
So darkness in the pathway of man's life 
Is but the shadow of God's providence, 
By the great sun of wisdom cast thereon ; 
And what is dark below is light in heaven ! 

The spirit of the great poet's philosophy and reli- 
gion, he thus expresses : 

Bear up, bear on, the eud shall tell 
The dear Lord ordereth all things well. 

In a letter dated May 7, 1866, he writes : 

God will do the best that is possible for all. 



\®x. % ©♦ @$»rmtt — 1807-1870. 

Kev. L. C. Marvin w r as formerly a clergyman of 
the Universalist church. In his later years he was 
a physician. He died in Missouri at advanced age. 
On the death of the son of a friend, Dr. Marvin wrote : 

How could I tread that hallowed plain 
Where God and Christ and angels are, 



190 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Or how could heaven to me be gain, 
Unless the lad were with me there ? 

How conld I join that wondrous throng, 
'Mid burnished crowns and burning thrones, 
And know his voice shall but prolong 
Hell's dolorous, deep and dreadful groans? 

* * * * 

I'd join some rebel angel throng, 
And power omnipotent defy, 
The shout of war should be my song, 
To sound rebellion through the sky. 

* * * * 

Far down through space, where Satan fell, 
On strong immortal wings I'd fly, 
And share the deepest, darkest hell, 
Or bring the lad with me on high. 

Yes, dearest boy ! thy every woe 
On earth 'tis given to me to share; 
May God no other world bestow, 
Unless that boon be granted there. 



L l^tmm**— A. D + 1807-1880. 

One of the most eloquent of the divines of the 
Universalist church was also a poet. He says : 

Thou whose wide-extended sway, 
Suns and systems e'er obey ! 
Thou our. Guardian and our Stay, 

Evermore obeyed ; 
In prospective, Lord, we see 
Jew and Gentile, bond and free. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 191 

Reconciled in Christ to thee, 
Holy, holy, Lord ! 

Thou by all shalt be confessed, 
Ever blessing, ever blest, 
When to thy eternal rest 

In the courts above, 
Thou shalt bring the sore oppressed, 
Fill each joy-desiring breast, 
Make of each a welcome guest, 

At the feast of love. 

When destroying death shall die, 
Hushed be every rising sigh, 
Tears be wiped from every eye, 

Never more to fall ; 
Then shall praises fill the sky, 
And angelic hosts shall cry 
Holy, holy Lord, most high, 

Thou art all in all ! 



SJpMmt Jfomnfb JSmimstarL— A. D. 1807. 

If we inquire after the wherefore of the creation of the 
world, or after the motive in the divine will for calling the 
world into existence, the question is identical with that regard- 
ing the design of creation. The New Testament gives to this 
question the answer : — The world is created at once by God and 
to God (eis Theon) Eom. xi : 36. In this general destination 
there lie implicitly two elements. If the world is created to God, 
this means, first : — That the aim of the creation of the world is the 
manifestation of the divine nature in outward time-being and 
space-being, the self-glorifying of God in created being. But 
as the divine will is no egoistic one, but is love, which, while 



192 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

it seeks itself, seeks by tliat very thing the good of others, the 
world cannot be merely the means of glorifying God; its design 
is at once the manifestation of the glory of God and also the 
highest well-being, the blessedness of the creatures. These? 
however, are not two elements standing apart from each other ; 
the glorifying of God and the blessedness of the creatures are 
essentially one thing. The exhibition of the divine nature as 
absolute love is directly and at the same time the blessedness 
of the creatures ; the self-manifestation of God in created exis- 
tence is also as well the participation of creation in the divine 
fulness of life, i. e., its blessedness. "What the analysis of the 
eis Theon thus tells us is expressly confirmed by those New Tes- 
tament passages which speak of the design of redemption. The 
New Testament looks at creation with reference to redemption ; 
the goal to be reached by the latter is presented as the design 
fixed by God in creation, just as according to the nature of the 
case, redemption can be only the means to the realization of 
the design in creation (Eph. i :4-10-l2). But the goal of redemp- 
tion is that God may be all in all (I. Cor. xv: 28), by which is 
not meant a resolving and dissolving of the creature in God, 
but its being permeated with the divine fulness of life, while 
preserving its distinct and separate existence (Eph. iii: 19). In 
this, however, is involved just as much the glorifying of God 
as the blessed rest of the creatures in God. Heb. 4:9; Eph. 
i: 6, 12; Eev. xxi:3, and following verses, II: 455, 6. — Christ' 
liche Apologetikauf Anthropologischer Gruncllage, Frank- 
furt-on-Main. [Original translation.] 



dartrftnj JL JL Ifmtau— A. D. 1808-1877. 

Visiting a reform prison for youthful convicts, her 
heart is tenderly touched as she looks into their child- 
ish faces, where might he seen, probably, many traces 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 193 

of a depravity which they had sadly inherited ; and 
thus she speaks of them as 

The wrecked, round whom the threatening surges boomed, 
Borne in this life-boat far from peril's stress; 

The sheltered, o'er whose head the thunder loomed ; 
Convicts, (convicted of much helplessness) — 

Exiles, whom mercy guides through guilt's dark wilderness. 

Then in drawing a contrast between the wayward 
children of poverty, and those of highly favored con- 
ditions, she shows how love clings to its own, and will 
not let them go, even though low down in the degrada- 
tion and wretchedness of sin. 

Are there no sons at college, "sadly wild?" 

No children, wayward, difficult to rear? 
Are they cast off by love ? No, gleaming mild, 

Through the salt drops of many a bitter tear, 
The rainbow of your hope shines out of all your fear ! 

The spirit of our beautiful and comprehensive faith 
was in the heart of this gifted poet, to say the least, — 
and this, perhaps, is saying much — for the truest and 
best faith is of the spirit, much more than of the let- 
ter. 



John E. Thompson is widely and favorably known 
in the literary world. In a poem he read before the 
Alumni of the University of Virginia, at their annual 
meeting, July 1, 1869, he says : 
13 



194: A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

And, casting off unwise regrets, 

"We yet may hope that time shall prove 
Kind hearts are more than bayonets, 

And force less strong than love ; 
We know that order shall appear, 
When God has made his purpose clear, 
The darkest riddle shall be understood, 
And all the perfect world shall in his sight be good ! 



Ijjim H[imm$ t 

•This gentleman was a highly respected citizen of 
Baltimore, who departed this life not long since. He 
was a gentleman of culture, and widely known as a 
successful business man. A few years ago he pub- 
lished a work of some 400 pages octavo, entitled " One 
Eeligion ; Many Creeds." 

Our belief is that man, being thus governed and trained 
through time and during eternity, a good and happy result 
must ensue to each individual. * * The idea of hell, hell 
fire, and eternal torment, when properly considered, is an idea 
that is alike blasphemous and illogical. Not so with the idea of 
eternal progress toward infinite knowledge and happiness, 
which is a natural deduction from our earthly experience. He 
(God) has ordained that every man shall sooner or later recog- 
nize and appreciate his blessing. Nothing less is consistent 
with God's determinate will and perfections. God is a God of 
infinite goodness, not.of vengeance ; to be loved, not feared ; to 
be worshiped for love's sake, not through fear of everlasting 
punishment. We believe that every man will eventually love 
him, and strive more and more to serve him. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 195 

©Jtejj l[imteH :faJtm**— A. D. 1809. 

Not only does this poet and man of genius repu- 
diate the old abominations that have so long degraded 
the name of religion, but he rises to a high strain of 
exultation in setting forth the truth. When he 
describes "What We All Think," he speaks of 

That one unquestioned text we read, 
All doubt beyond, all fear above, 

Nor crackling pile, nor cursing creed, 
Can burn or blot it — God is love ! 

The "Crooked Footpath" describes the various 
paths of mortals, and concludes that 

No earth-born will 
Could ever trace a faultless line ; 
Our truest steps are human still, — ■ 
To walk unswerving were divine ! 

Truants from love we dream of wrath ; 

O, rather let us trust the more ! 
Through all the wanderings of the path, 

We still can see our Father's door. 

He vividly describes 

Those monstrous, uncouth horrors of the past, 
That blot the blue of heaven and shame the earth 
As would the saurians of the age of slime, 
Awaking from their stony sepulchers 
And wallowing hateful in the eye of day ! 

The English language contains few more eloquent 
denunciations of popular error, or grander statements 
of the truth, than are contained in "Love." 



196 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

What if a soul redeemed, a spirit that loved 
While yet on earth, and was beloved in turn, 
And still remembered every look and tone 
Of that dear earthly sister who was left 
Among the unwise virgins at the gate, 
Itself admitted with the bridegroom's train, — 
What if this spirit redeemed, amid the host 
Of chanting angels, in some transient lull 
Of the eternal anthem, heard the cry 
Of its lost darling, whom in evil hour 
Some wilder pulse of nature led astray, 
And left an outcast in a world of fire, 
Condemned to be the sport of cruel fiends, 
Sleepless, unpitying, masters of the skill 
To wring the maddest ecstacies of pain 
From worn-out souls that only ask to die, — 
Would it not long to leave the bliss of heaven, — 
Bearing a little water in its hand 
To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain 
With him we call our Father ? Or is all 
So changed in such as taste celestial joy, 
They hear, unmoved, the endless wail of woe ; 
The daughter in the same dear tones that hushed 
Her cradled slumbers ; she who once had held 
A babe upon her bosom, from its voice 
Hoarse with its cry of anguish, yet the same ? 
No ! not in ages when the Dreadful Bird 
Stamped his huge footprints, and the fearful Beast 
Strode with the flesh about those fossil bones 
We build to mimic life with pigmy hands, — 
Not in those earliest days when men ran wild, 
And gashed each other with their knives of stone, 
When their low foreheads bulged in ridgy roads, 
And their flat hands were callous in the palm 
With walking in the fashion of their sires, 
Grope as they might, to find a cruel God 
To work their will on such as human wrath 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 197 

Had wrought its worst to torture, and had left 
With rage unsated, white and stark and cold, 
Could hate have shaped a demon more malign 
Than him the dead men murmured in their creed, 
And taught their trembling children to adore ! 
Made in his image ! Sweet and gracious souls, 
Dear to my heart by nature's fondest names, 
Is not your memory still the precious mould 
That lends its form to him who hears my prayer? 
Thus only I behold him, like to them, 
Long-suffering, gentle, ever slow to wrath, 
If wrath it be that only wounds to heal, 
Ready to meet the wanderer ere he reach 
The door he seeks, forgetful of his sin, 
Longing to clasp him in his father's arms, 

And seal his pardon with a pitying tear. 

***** 

"Would that the heart of woman warmed our creeds ! 

Not from the sad-eyed hermit's lonely cell, 

Not from the conclave where the holy men 

Glare on each other as with angry eyes, 

They battle for God's glory and their own, 

Till, sick of wordy strife a show of hands 

Fixes the faith of ages yet unborn, — 

Ah, not from these the listening soul can hear 

The Father's voice that speaks itself divine. 

Love must be still our master ; till we learn 

What he can teach us of a woman's heart, 

We know not his, whose love embraces all. 



Ssmtijsmu — A. D. 1809. 

"In Memoriam," Tennyson's lament over the death 
of his friend — fibers from the heart are its eloquent 



198 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

lines — the great poem of this century, announces the 
high hopes inspired by a vision of the restitution of 
all things. Thus he sings : 

Oh, yes, we trust that somehow good 

Will be the final goal of ill, 

To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood : 

That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
That not one lif e shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 

When God hath made the pile complete : 

That not a worm is cloven in vain, 
That not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, 

Or but subserves another's gain. 

Behold ! we know not anything; 

I can but trust that good shall fall 

At last — far off — at last to all, 
And every Winter change to Spring. 

So runs my dream; but what am I? 

An infant crying in the night ; 

An infant crying for the light ; 
And with no language but a cry. 

And again : 

That God which ever lives and loves, 

One God, one law, one element, 

And one far-off, divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves. 



The wish, that of the living whole 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 199 

No life may fail beyond the grave, 
Derives it not from what we have 
The likest God within the soul ? 

In the "Vision of Sin," after the poet has described 

his vision of evil, he sees hope of its final extinction : 

At last I heard a voice upon the slope 

Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?" 

To which the answer pealed upon that high land, 

But in a tongue no man could understand, 

And on the glimmering summit far withdrawn, 

God made himself an awful rose of dawn. 

Addressing Kev. F. D. Maurice as 

Being of that honest few 

Who give the fiend himself his due, 

He continues, — 

Should eighty thousand college councils 
Thunder "anathema," friend, at you, 
Should all our churchmen frown in spite, 
At you so careful of the right, 
Yet one lay hearth would give you welcome, — 
Take it and come to the Isle of Wight. 

The chief offence of Maurice is, that he advocates 

the doctrine of Tennyson : 

That good shall fall 

At last — far off — at last to all 

And every Winter change to Spring. 



JffisaWjf $arot Jruummg*— A. D. 1809-1861. 

The reader of the greatest English poetess finds 
the "divine event to which the whole creation moves" 
to be the keynote of her sublime strains. 



200 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Some years since Eev. Charles H. Leonard, of Tufts 
College, visited Mrs. Browning, and the following let- 
ter to the compiler of this volume describes the inter- 
view : 

* * * I hardly know how it was that the conversation took 
such direction, and deepened at last to such themes, but one 
could hardly help speaking his best, and of the best in her 
presence. She said that she had thought a good deal on the 
problem of destiny, referring as she went on in our talk to 
many things that had come to her in highest moments. I was 
so led to speak of our own ideas of God and the absolute life 
of the soul. One thing I remember seemed to impress her. I 
said : — "With me, it is not so much a question of destination 
as of destiny, and that means inward life, a life of the soul in 
God, and of God in the soul.''" "What do you call these views?" 
said she. I said, "We are Universalists. Our religion is known 
as Universalism." I shall never forget the light that spread 
over her face as she repeated the word several times, "Univer- 
salism, Universalism!" After a little she said, "How full the 
word is, how strong, and how fine in literature !" She said this 
last as if she were recalling something which she had read. But 
I did not interrupt her. She then spoke again of the name 
Universalist, and seemed to like to hold it close to her thought, 
and often to take it upon her lips. " These ideas of religion 
are the highest," she said. 

And who saith "I loved once?" 
Not God, called Love, his noble-crown name, — casting 

A light too broad for blasting ! 
The great God changing not from everlasting, 

Saith never "I loved once." 



I am strong — 
Knowing ye are not lost for aye among 
The hills, with last year's thrush. God keeps a niche 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 201 

In heaven to hold our idols ; and albeit 
He brake them to our faces, and denied 
That our close kisses should impair their white, 
I know we shall behold them raised, complete, 
The dust shook from their beauty, — glorified, 
New Memnons singing in the great God-light. 

We -will trust God. The blank interstices 
Men take for ruins, he will build into 

With pillared marbles rare, or knit across 
With generous arches, till the fane's complete ; 

This world has no perdition, if some loss. 



Her "Drama of Exile," a glorious poem founded 
on the original lapse of man, sings the exalted strains 
of the great restitution. As the exiled pair slowly 
pass out of Eden, into the desert, a semi-chorus is 
heard, saying, — 

So in the universe's 
Consummate undoing, 
Our angels of white mercies 
Shall hover round the ruin ! 
Their wings shall stream upon the flame, 
As if incorporate of the same, 

In elemental fusion ; 
And calm their faces shall burn out 
With a pale and mastering thought, 
And a steadfast looking of desire, 
From out between the clefts of fire, 
While they cry in the Holy's name ! 

To the final Eestitution ! 
Listen to our loving ! 

She represents Christ as saying : 

For, at last, 
I, wrapping round me your humanity, 



202 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Which, being sustained, shall neither break nor burn 

Beneath the fire of Godhead, will tread earth, 

And ransom you, and it, and set strong peace 

Betwixt you and its creatures. With my pangs 

I will confront your sins, and since your sins 

Have sunken to all nature's heart from yours, 

The tears of my clean soul shall follow them, 

And set a holy passion to work clear 

Absolute consecration. In my brow 

Of kingly whiteness, shall be crowned anew 

Your discrowned human nature. Look on me ! 

As I shall be uplifted on a cross 

In darkness of eclipse ; and anguish dread, 

So shall I lift up in my pierced hands 

Not into dark, but light — not unto death, 

But life, beyond the reach of guilt and grief, 

The whole creation. 

Well does this sublime composition end by saying 
to our sinful race, — 

Hear us sing above you, 
Exiled but not lost ! 



JBmtipm JdmOtu—A. D. 1809-1865. 

The martyr-president was known to be of liberal 
religious principles. On one occasion he listened to 
a discussion on human destiny, in which L. C. Mar- 
vin, author of "My Boy," was a participant. When 
asked his opinion on the question, he replied : 

"It must be everybody or nobody." 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 203 

\idpu& ioitttat ®ite$— A. D. 1809. 

O ye ! who talk of Death, and mourn for Death, 
Why do you raise a phantom of your weakness, 
And then shriek loud to see what ye have made ? 
There is no Death, to those w r ho know of Life — 
No Time to those who see Eternity! 



fvtf&stni f* £♦ ifartfci?-— A. D. 1809. 

This author and scholar thus testifies : 

The generations of uncounted men 

Have hymned thy praises, Lord. Their stammering tongues 

With strange, crude doctrines magnify the power 

Of him whose vastness they were fain to grasp, 

But coidd not. Even the folly of the fool 

Shall praise thee, Lord. Thou hast a place for all. 

The wicked and the weak are but the steps 

Whereon the wise shall mount to see thy face, 

And mighty churches, and high vaunted faiths, 

Are but the schools, wherein thy centuries train 

The infant peoples to the manly reach 

Of pure devotion ; and most wise are they 

Who hear one hymn of varied truth through all 

The harmonious discord of strange witnesses, 

Prophets and martyrs, priests and meek-eyed saints, 

And rapt diviners with imperfect tongue, 

Babbling thy praises. 

****** 

A "Sabbath Meditation," in "Songs of Eeligion 
and Life" : 



There's my apology for the poor Hindoos, 



204 A CLOUD OP WITNESSES. 

Convert them if you can, but do not damn ; 
Curse not the beggar when you dole your doit ; 
Preach, like St. Paul, in gentlemanly wise, 
And do not swear that brindled hides are black 
To make yourself look whiter. I believe 
There is much high and holy wisdom hid 
In what you damn wholesale ; but, if you find 
No sheep outside the Presbyterian fold, 
(All else being goats), and what I take for gold 
You deem base brass, till stamped in thine own mint, 
I would not strive with thee ; God made thee so ; 
My thoughts would not lodge sweetly in thy skin. 

Prof. Blackie, in his "Natural History of Athe- 
ism/' p. 201, observes : 

It does not require any very profound scholarship to know 
that the word aionios, which we translate everlasting, does 
not signify eternity, absolutely and metaphysically, but only 
popularly, as when we say that a man is an eternal fool, mean- 
ing by that, he is a very great fool. 



| ^ \ jpttft, j». j). 

The author of "Bible Dictionary," Manchester, 
Eng., thus writes : 

Por one moment let us dwell on that word — the word 
"everlasting," or "eternal." Now, in the first place, the readers 
of the English Bible have not to do with that word itself, but 
with a translation of it. Are the two identical in meaning? 
Do they each cover the same ground? Certainly not. Our 
conception of eternity is much more absolute than that of either 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 205 

the Greeks or the Hebrews, with whom the corresponding 
words denoted generally an indefinite and unknown period. 
Can we speak of eternities? They could. Yea, "eternities of 
eternities; "before the eternities," and "to the eternities of 
eternities," are forms of speech employed in the New Testa- 
ment. What then ? There are several eternities, and eterni- 
ties are appended to eternities. Clearly, the Greek original 
signifies much less than its English representative ; and if any- 
thing, less than endless; the word expresses time, and not what 
we call eternity. Then, the word is also used of subjects 
which in their nature are of limited duration. It is used of 
tilings. Is a thing imperishable or perishable ? It is used of 
this world ; but this world passeth away. It is used of times ; 
times, however, can be nothing more than repeated years, days 
and hours. It is used of fire ; but unquenchable fire is an impos- 
sibility, unless fire, which, consuming other things, consumes 
itself, shares God's deathlessness. It is used of punishment ; 
but the punishment which does not end in reformation is vin- 
dictive!) ess, which cannot be ascribed to the Merciful Father, 
whose name and whose essence is love. 

How, then, has it come to pass that the belief in eternal 
punishment took root in the Christian church ? 

By respect for the letter, and disregard for the spirit of 
the Gospel. The letter killeth ; but the spirit giveth life. 

Ancient doctors of the church, misled by theoretical con- 
clusions, declared that sin was an infinite transgression, to be 
atoned for only by an infinite expiation. If sin is infinite, it 
is, of course, eternal. Eternal sin involves eternal punishment. 
Hence the doctrine. The doctrine is the child of human rea- 
soning. 

The eternal life, of which under God, Christ is the author 
and the source, is nothing less than the life of God himself, 
considered as evoked and developed in men by the quickening 
and fostering spirit of Christ. This life, which is a natural 
outcome under a divine training, grows constantly fuller, and 
becomes less incomplete in the true disciple as his days increase, 
and when at last, he throws off this mortal coil, it emerges, and 



206 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

unfolding into the proportions of Christ's own stature, becomes 
purely spiritual, and taking a glorified body after its kind, enters 
on a career of loving and blessed communion with God and 
beatified souls, which may rise forever, but can never end, 
since being of God it shares God's immortality. 

That one-half creation is to know 
Luxurious joys, and others only woe, 
And so go down into the common tomb 
With need to question their unequal doom — 
Shall we give credit to a thought so foul ? 
Ah, no ! the world beyond — the world beyond ! 
There shall the desolate heart regain its own ! 
There the oppressed shall stand before God's throne ! 
There, when the tangled web is all explained, 
Wrong suffered, pain inflicted, grief disdained ; 
Man's proud, mistaken judgment and false scorn 
Shall melt, like mists, before the uprising morn, 
And holy truth stand forth, serenely bright 
In the rich flood of God's eternal light ! 



Jftmrarfc Sfadfo 

In seeking to show you by what slow steps man came to 
believe in one all- wise and all-good God, I wish to fix one great 
truth upon your young heart about him; for the nobler your 
view of him is, the nobler is your life likely to be. 

Now, you would think your father very hard and cruel if 
he loaded you with all the good things he had, and sent your 
brothers and sisters, each yearning for his love and kisses, to 
some homeless spot to live uncared for and unloved, and to die 
unwept. And yet this is exactly what some people have said 
that God does. They have spoken of him, who has given life 
to every man, woman and child, without power on their part 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 207 

to take or refuse what is thus given, as being near only a few 
of his creatures, and leaving the rest, feeling a soul-hunger 
after him, to care for themselves and never find him. 

Believe that he who is called our Father is better, more 
just, more loving, than the best fathers can be, and that he 
"is not far from any one of us." — ''Childhood of the World." 



ffanj ©arfrnttteij* 

This distinguished English philanthropist said, 
among her latest utterances : 

There are some things of which the most clear and unan- 
swerable reasoning could not convince me. One of these is 
that a wise, all-powerful and loving Father can create an immor- 
tal spirit for eternal misery. Joguth's answer to such people 
is the best I ever heard ! "If you are a child of the devil, good ! 
But I am the child of God." 

Frances Power Cobbe says in "Personal [Recollec- 
tions of Mary Carpenter," Modem Review, April, 1880 : 

Mary Carpenter's theology was, I believe, exactly that of 
her beloved father, Dr. Lant Carpenter. [See page 117 of this 
book.] 



Up^tmnj ysrfeij + — A. D. 1810-1860. 

The great radical cherished the hope of final good : 

In darker days and nights of storm, 
Men knew thee but to fear thy form; 



208 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

And in the reddest lightning saw 
Thine arm avenge insulted law. 

In brighter days we read thy love 
In flowers beneath, in stars above, 
And in the track of every storm 
Behold thy beauty's rainbow form. 

And in the reddest lightning's path 
We see no vestiges of wrath, 
But always wisdom, perfect love, 
From flowers beneath, to stars above. 

See from on high sweet influence rains 
On palace, cottage, mountains, plains ; 
No hour of wrath shall mortals fear, 
For their Almighty Love is near. 



JIttuttijmtm$ + 

This sublime chant entitled "Lucifer Eedux," is by 
an unknown author : 

Prince of the fallen stars, 
Thy front shall lose its scars ! 
The fires shall cease to burn, 
Thy legions shall return ! 

The demon's crown of woe 
No more shall gird thy brow ; 
The fires shall cease to burn, 
Thy legions shall return ! 

In heaven thy starred domain 
Shall greet its chief again ; 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 209 

H^ie fires shall cease to burn, 
Thy legions shall return ! 

Thine ancient halls of state, 

So long left desolate, 

Shall ring with joy once more, 

Shall bloom with wreath and flower. 

The constellations bright, 
The torches of the night, 
Around thy steps shall chant 
A paean jubilant. 

The wheels that o'er thee drove, 
The sword thy mail that clove, 
Shall lead thy glad return, 
Before thy march shall burn ! 

From "The Butterfly" : 

If with Deity 'tis just 
That a worm goes back to dust ; 
Tell me, tell me, ye who can, 
What supports the hope of man ? 
What have we received by birth, 
More than crumbles back to earth ? 
O, I'd die to-day to know 
That it is not even so. 

Yet, if this be all we get, 
We should make the most of it. 
Let us love and laugh our fill ; 
Let the senses have their will : 
And, to check the gushing tear, 
Since we know that death is near, 
Hope some other world of bliss 
Will amend the wrongs of this. 
14 



210 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Hold ! — the soul of Nature saith, 
There is no such thing as death ; 
Every form is marked by Change, 
But to take a Higher Bange. 
On the metamorphosis 
Of a folded chrysalis, 
Hope this truth may predicate : 
All that live doth heaven await. 



Harsarrf \nlht{ ©$$ttfi— A. D. 1810-1850. 

Margaret Fuller's name is one of the "immortal 
few." Her soul was full of the great faith that 

Whatever has been permitted by the law of being, must 
be for good, and only in time not good. Evil is obstruction ; 
good is accomplishment. — "Life," Vol. II, p. 89. 

I do not myself see how a reflecting soul can endure the 
passage through life, except by confidence in a Power that 
must at last order all things right, and the resolution that it 
shall not be our fault if we are not happy, — that we will reso- 
lutely deserve to be happy. [See her "Life and Letters."] 



J. S. Taylor, in "Clouds and Sunshine," expresses 
the prevailing sentiment of modern literature : 

I cannot believe that God has doomed any creatures of his, 
in any part of his dominions, to endless misery. That every 
sin must have its attendant sorrow ; that the penalty of every 
transgression must be paid to the full ; that no sophistry or 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 211 

ingenuity can evade that payment ; that guilt and wretched- 
ness still abound on earth, and in other worlds, and that they 
will long continue to impair their beauty and hairiness, all 
these things who will presume to question ? But that this sad 
history is to remain so forever, or that any star in the universe 
is destined to be the theater of eternal suffering, or that any 
being exists in any part of it, so steeped in guilt and anguish 
(no, not Satan himself,) as to be beyond the redeeming love 
or healing power of the Creator, I no more believe it than I do 
that there is any intellect that can baffle God's wisdom, or any 
force that can resist his supremacy. Oh, no ; on the contrary, 
I believe that in this mysterious, but divinely ordained con- 
flict of good and evil, the powers of light, are, everywhere, 
slowly but surely gaining the ascendancy over the powers of 
darkness, and that it will continue to be so, even unto the per- 
fect day ; yes, that perfect day, wherein all these blessed victor- 
ies over sin and ignorance shall have been consummated, these 
transformations completed, and no solitary stain of folly, guilt, 
or grief, be left to mar the luster of the universe. 



Author of a singular and able work, "Body and 
Mind," Moore tells us among other things : 

To believe in him who is the reconciler of all things to 
himself, is to believe in the ultimate vindication of all his attri- 
butes, and to feel that the stability of his throne is as sure as 
eternity. The love that originated all creatures has never 
allowed his own nature to be involved in the contradiction of 
their necessarily narrowed understandings, and when their 
round of error is completed according to their little wills, it 
shall still be found that his will triumphs, and the boundless 
universe must everlastingly declare in every color of three- 



212 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

fold light, and in the lines of darkness that divide its rays, in 
spite of sin, in spite of suffering, in spite of death, that God is 
love, the source of endless light. 

"Turpis universo non congruens," wisely says the 
strong-hearted Augustine, since every soul that is out of keep- 
ing with divine order must remain, in the license of a perverse 
will, forever vile, until restored to the dominion of truth by 
the attractiveness of light and the miseries of darkness. 



g$arftt %nvtpi{Mi ¥ttppnij + — A. D. 1810. 

The author of "Proverbial Philosophy" thus exalts 

the omnipotent power that is destined to conquer the 

world : 

Love is the weapon which Omnipotence reserved to con- 
quer rebel man when all the rest had failed. Reason he par- 
ries ; fear he answers blow to blow ; future interests he meets 
with present pleasure ; but love, that sun against whose melt- 
ing beams Winter cannot stand — that soft, subduing slumber, 
which wrestles down the giant — there is not one human creat- 
ure in a million, not a thousand men in all the earth's huge 
quintillion, whose clay heart is hardened against love. 



©Ijarte jUmtmat-— A. D. 1811-1874. 

The eloquent reformer and senator thus speaks 
in his oration on "Progress" : 

Every victory over evil redounds to the benefit of all. 
Every discovery, every human thought, every truth when 
declared, is a conquest of which the whole human family are 
partakers. ****** 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 213 

Thus does the "Law of Human Progress" 
Assert eternal Providence, 
And justify the ways of God to man, 

by showing Evil no longer a gloomy mystery, binding the 
world in everlasting thrall, but as an accident, destined under 
the laws of God to be slowly subdued by the works of men, as 
they pass on to the promised goal of happiness. 

It is true that there are various races of men, but there is 
but one great human family, in which Caucasian, Ethiopian, 
Chinese and Indian are all brothers, children of one Father, 
and heirs of one happiness. 



imh?-— A. D. 1811-1872. 

The ablest American journalist was a zealous 
Universalist. He was an active member of Eev. Dr. 
E. H. Chapin's parish in New York. Here is a sentence 
worthy of being engraved on a panel of gold. May 
it not contain the secret of his zeal ? 

Believing most firmly in the ultimate and perfect triumph 
of good over evil, I rejoice in the existence and diffusion of 
that liberty, which, while it intensifies the contest, accelerates 
the consummation. 

In his "Kecollections of a Busy Life" Mr. Gree- 
ley declares : 

I had read the Bible through, much of it repeatedly, but 
when quite too infantile to form any coherent, definite synop- 
sis of the doctrines I presumed to be taught therein. But soon 
after entering a printing office, I procured exchanges with sev- 
eral Universalist periodicals, and was thenceforth familiar with 
their methods of interpretation and of argument. 



214: A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

I am not, therefore, to be classed with those who claim to 
have been converted from one creed to another by studying 
the Bible alone. Certainly, upon re-reading that book in the 
light of my new convictions, I found therein abundant proof 
of their correctness in the averments of patriarchs (Gen. iii : 
15 ; xii : 3), prophets (Isa. xxv : 8 ; xlv : 22-25), apostles (Rom. 
v: 12-21; viii: 19-21; I. Cor. xv: 42-54; Eph. i:8-10; Colos. 
i : 19-21 ; I. Tim. ii : 3-6), and of the Messiah himself (Matt. 
xv : 13) . But, not so much in particular passages, however per- 
tinent, and decisive as in the spirit and general scope of the 
Gospel — so happily blending inexorable punishment for every 
offence with unfailing pity and ultimate forgiveness for the 
chastened transgressor — thus saving sinners from sin by lead- 
ing them, through suffering, to loathe and forsake it; and in 
laying down its golden rale, which, if of universal application? 
must be utterly inconsistent with the infliction of infinite and 
unending torture as the penalty of transient, and often ignor- 
ant, offending, did I find ample warrant for my hope and trust 
that all suffering is disciplinary, and transitional, and shall 
ultimately result in universal holiness and consequent happi- 
ness 



% ft. luteal?.— A. D. 1811-1863. 

We place this man of genius in our constellation 
of great names. In the absence of other evidence, the 
following is sufficient authority. Speaking of the 
genius of Charles Dickens, he says : 

I recognize in it — I speak it with awe and reverence — a 
commission from that Divine Beneficence, whose blessed task 
we know it will one day be to wipe every tear from every eye. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 215 

|. 9. Jfefcdtat.— A. D. 1811. 

The Professor of Theology, Leyden, declares : 

The restoration of all tilings to be inferred from the effi- 
cacy of the Spirit of Christ seems to be declared by Christ 
(Matt, xiii : 13 ; John xii : 32), and by Paul, (I. Cor. xv : 22-28 ; 
Rom. v:18; xi:32; Col. 1:19, 20; Phil, ii : 10 ; I. Tim. ii : 4 ; 
iv : 10). It is a doctrine in accordance with the spiritual nature 
of man, and is demanded as well by the holiness as by the love 
of God, with which the thought of eternal evil is inconsistent. 
Passages in which everlasting misery or absolute destruc- 
tion seem to be taught are to be explained either by the 
popular mode of expression or by the eschatological represen- 
tation prevalent among the Jews (Matt, xxv : 46). Or, they are 
meant to indicate the wretched condition in which the world 
unsaved by Christ lies (Rom. ii : 8, 9 ; iii : 19) ; or, in fine, they 
describe the absolute misery of sin, the loss to the sinner of 
all spiritual life, certain to come unless he repent and God 
avert it (Matt. 19 : 25, 2G ; xii : 31 ; Mark iii : 29). This is the 
biblical doctrine of the restitution — as by sin all are obnoxious 
to death, corruption, perdition, condemnation, the wrath of 
God, destruction, judgment, teonian punishment, so by Christ 
through the efficacy of the Holy Spirit, all shall sooner or later 
be restored to life, so that there shall be no place in the uni- 
verse without the worship of the true God in the name of Jesus 
Christ (Phil, ii: 10). — Dogmat. Christ. Initio, 270. 



Ipm-rot JMN jitatt%— A. D. 1812. 

Mrs. Stowe's writings abound in satire of the 
absurd vagaries of the Puritan theology. While we 
do not feel certain that she has anywhere avowed faith 



216 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

in the ultimate redemption of all souls, we are sure 

that the drift of her words is against the opposite 

error. 

In "The Minister's Wooing" (p. 139) Candace 

utterly repudiates the teachings of Dr. Hopkins and 

the catechism, and declares : 

"I didn't do dat ar' for one, I knows. I's got good mem'ry, 
— always knows what I does, — neber did eat dat ar' apple, — 
neber eat a bit ob him — don't tell me ! " 

She records, with evident satisfaction, that the 
facts of the Divine administration seemed horrible 
to Jonathan Edwards, and that the puritanic theories 
on many minds had the effect of "slow poison, " resem- 
bling "the New Testament as the living embrace of a 
friend does his lifeless body, mapped out under the 
knife of the anatomical demonstrator. " When James 
Marvyn was supposed to have died, his mother, in 
view of his probable damnation, declared God to be 
"hard, unjust, cruel;— to all eternity I will say so." 
And in contrast with Dr. Hopkins' outrageous theol- 
ogy, Mrs. Stowe brings out the simple truth from the 
lips of the poor negress, Candace : 

"Why, de Lord a'n't like what ye tink — he loves ye, honey ! 
"Why, jes' feel how I love ye — poor, old, black Candace, — an' I 
a'n't better'n him as made me ! Who was it wore de crown o' 
thorns, lamb? Who was it sweat great drops o' blood? Who 
was it said, — 'Father, forgive them?' Say, honey, wasn't it de 
Lord dat made ye?" 

These simple allusions to the boundless love of God 
accomplished what the theology of New England failed 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 217 

to accomplish, and we read with delight how the sor- 
rowful experiences of Mary Scudcler won her away 
from the heartless teachings of her minister, who was 
no other than the high priest of error, Dr. Hopkins, 
himself, till one day 

In a praying circle of the women of the church, all were 
startled by the clear silver tones of one who sat among them 
and spoke with the unconscious simplicity of an angel child, 
calling God her Father, and speaking of an ineffable union in 
Christ, binding all things together in one, and making all com- 
plete in him. 

Her opinion of the old puritanic scheme is well 
expressed by Sam Lawson, who, when the parson had 
described the small number of the finally saved, said, 
— "Well, any on ye's welcome to my chance." And 
the reader of "The Minister's Wooing" cannot fail to 
sympathize with the model Yankee, Prissy, who said : 

I hope I may be accepted on account of the Lord's great 
goodness ; for if we can't trust that, it's all over with us all. 



Tffortmm ftajjjbtiir, !* J*— A. D. 1812-1872. 

This eminent Scottish divine and author, owned 
MacLeod Campbell and Erskine, of Linlathen, as his 
teachers. In his biography by his brother, Dr. Don- 
ald MacLeod, it is shown that the idea of universal 
restoration grew on him to the last, and his friend, 
Alex. Strahan, relates, (Contemporary Review, ipip. 297- 
8, Vol. XX:) 



218 A. CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

When our common friend, Mr. George Macdonald, was 
about to write for Good Words, of which Dr. MacLeod was 
editor, Dr. MacLeod was anxious that no heterodox views 
should be introduced into it. For hours the two discussed the 
matter in the publishing office with the friendliest warmth. At 
length in tripped a little girl, and by her simple, wise prattle, 
not only put an end to the controversy, but actually became 
the model for the most interesting character of the story. 
Before his death Dr. McLeod had adopted Mr. Maurice's stand- 
point on this question, as he emphatically made manifest in 
the last sermon I heard hini preach at Balmoral. 



Hatfoaj*— A. D. 1812. 

This cheerful singer indicates the true philosophy 
when he says : 

Once we thought that Power Eternal 

Had decreed the woes of man ; 
That the human heart was wicked 

Since its pulses first began ; 
That the earth was but a prison, 

Dark and joyless at the best, 
And that men were born for evil, 

And imbibed it from the breast ; 
That 'twas vain to think of urging 

Any earthly progress on. 
Old opinions ! rags and tatters ! 

Get you gone ! get you gone ! 

Old opinions, rags and tatters ; 

Ye are worn ; — ah, quite threadbare ! 
We must cast you off forever ; — 

We are wiser than we were ; 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 219 

Never fitting, always cramping, 

Letting in the wind and sleet, 
Chilling us with rheums and agues, 

Or inflaming us with heat. 
We have found a mental raiment 

Purer, whiter to put on. 
Old opinions ! rags and tatters ! 

Get you gone ! get you gone ! 



A little child beneath a tree, 

Sat and chanted cheerily 

A little song, a pleasant song, 

Which was — she sang it all day long — 

"When the wind blows the blossoms fall; 

But a good God reigns over all. " 

There passed a lady by the way, 
Moaning in the face of day ; 
There were tears upon her cheek, 
Grief in her heart too great to speak ; 
Her husband died but yestermorn, 
And left her in the world forlorn. 

She stopped and listened to the child, 
That looked to heaven, and singing, smiled ; 
And saw not, for her own despair, 
Another lady, young and fair, 
Who also passing, stopped to hear 
The infant-anthem ringing clear. 

For she but a few sad days before 

Had lost the little babe she bore ; 

And grief was heavy at her soul 

As that sweet memory o'er her stole, 

And showed how bright had been the Past, 

The Present drear and overcast. 



220 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

And as they stood beneath the tree, 
Listening, soothed and placidly, 
A youth came by, whose sunken eyes 
Spake of a load of miseries ; 
And he, arrested like the twain, 
Stopped to listen to the strain. 

Death had bowed the youthful head 
Of his bride beloved, his bride unwed ; 
Her marriage robes were fitted on, 
Her fair young face with blushes shone, 
When the destroyer smote her low, 
And changed the lover's bliss to woe. 

And these three listened to the song, 
Silver-toned, and sweet, and strong, 
Which that child, the live-long day, 
Chanted to itself in play : 
"When the wind blows the blossoms fall, 
But a good God reigns over all." 

The widow's lips impulsive moved ; 
The mother's grief, though unreproved, 
Softened, as her trembling tongue 
Hepeated what the infant sung ; 
And the sad lover, with a start, 
Conned it over to Ins heart. 

And though the child — if child it were, 
And not a seraph sitting there — 
Was seen no more, the sorrowing three 
Went on their way resignedly, 
The song still ringing in their ears — 
Was it the music of the spheres ? 

Who shall tell ? They did not know. 
But in the midst of deepest woe 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 221 

The strain recurred when sorrow grew, 
To warn them and console them, too : 
"When the wind blows the blossoms fall, 
But a good God reigns over all." 



%rfcs Ptfbns.— A. D. 1812-1870. 

The cheerful, sunny, genial spirit of Dickens' 
works is the soul of our faith. His books are per- 
vaded by it, and saturated with it. Here is a favor- 
able specimen: 

Ye meu of gloom and austerity, who paint the face of Infin- 
ite Benevolence with an eternal frown, read in the everlasting 
book, wide open to your view, the lesson it would teach. Its 
pictures are not in the black and sombre hues, but bright and 
glowing tints ; its music, save when ye drown it, is not in sighs 
and groans, but in songs and cheerful sounds. Listen to the 
million of voices in the summer air, and find one dismal as 
your own. Remember, if you can, the sense of hope and pleas- 
ure which every grand return of day awakens in the breast of 
all your kind, and learn wisdom even from the witless, when 
their hearts are lifted up, by all the happiness it brings. 



ttftrd |rtrttmijtg + — A. D. 1812. 

Bishop Gilbert Haven, of the Methodist church, 
in the New York Independent, accuses Browning of 
being guilty of the heresy of modern poetry, of hoping 
that "good will be the final goal of ill, " in these words : 



222 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

My own hope as a sun will pierce 

The thickest cloud earth ever stretched, 

That after Last returns the First, 

Though a wide compass round be fetched, 

That what began best can't be worst, 
And what God blest once prove accurst. 



^mvt} H[arir JMj&j*— A. D. 1813. 

The great Brooklyn divine has often spoken in a 
way to indicate broader views than those of his church. 
The following is an example : 

When I see what the old rocking continents are doing, 
and have been doing, from the creation, from the days of the 
flood, through all the treacheries and pitfalls wherein the human 
race has been reeling and staggering down to modern times ; 
when I look at Asia and Africa, and Europe, and America, and 
both continents of it, and see what the actual condition of the 
neglected, the stripped, the peeled, the despoiled, the down- 
trodden races of men has been ; if I thought that in addition to 
all this there was a God that was clothed in thunder, and whose 
business it was to stand at the door where men go out of life 
and crush them downward into eternal hell, — every instinct of 
charity, of sympathy and of love that is born in me by Christ, 
would stand crying, "Annihilate him! Annihilate him!" It 
would be the sorrow of the universe that would raise this cry. 

His latest utterance (in 1880) is to the effect that 
while he rejects "endless punishment, as unscriptural 
and unreasonable, the final outcome can only be 
inferred by analogy and reason. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 223 

This popular writer in "Yusef," p. 136, says : 

Is it for self-constituted judges to say that these people 
(the Turks) taught from infancy to regard their peculiar belief 
as the only true means of salvation, should be rewarded for 
their sincerity by everlasting torment ? Oh, ye who are wrapt 
in the selfishness of a single idea ! ye who bode destruction to 
others ! look out upon the broad universe and learn that there 
are millions of human hearts as sincere and devoted as yours, 
and that there is a Divine power great and good and merciful 
enough to save all, even to the weakest and most benighted. 



Jl ijtastai Into-— A. D. 1813-1852. 

The author of "Philo," "Margaret," "Kichard 

Edney," etc., says: 

I had as lief be damned, as see another damned. • 

Again : 

The stars are out, all out, heaven's telegraph 
By night. What the intelligence, dear Faith? 
'Tis thine to spell the twinkling syllables. 
It is the same old word since time began, 
Repeated seven nights a week — God loveth." 



\m. & X Jarful.— A. D. 1813. 

The idea that God changes, turns his face from the sinner 
who passes unreconciled, takes, beyond any profane swearing, 



224 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

his name in vain. No repentance or hope beyond the death- 
bed? As the tree falleth it must He ? The human soul is not 
a fallen tree ! The best repentance for the worst transgressor 
or most precious saint is after earthly decease, and Watts' line 
is true of neither, — 

Fixed in an eternal state ; 

for it were a five degradation of the future to annul there the 
law of progress which is the sole comfort here. 

That a babe is born totally corrupt, that a favored few are 
chosen and the rest eternally doomed, that any child of God 
can be finally lost, that his innocent son could be punished, 
doctrines once unthinkingly proclaimed, — are now impossible 
propositions ; not discarded from among the articles, but suf- 
fered to sleep, given the go-by, laid upon the table, because 
there is no chamber open to them in the human brain. 

Sorely as we have offended, we can do nothing fatal. Sheer 
blasphemy and inhumanity in the old theology is the doctrine 
of a doom to perdition and eternal woe for our personal or our 
ancestral delinquency. The bottomless pit were a blot on 
Deity, though but one soul wallowed in it ! 



Rev. Fergus Ferguson, of the United Presbyterian 
church, of Scotland, who is honored by being called 
a heretic, has recently lectured on "Modern Ortho- 
doxy." The dilemma of self-styled orthodoxy, in the 
opinion, and in the language of Mr. Ferguson, is, in 
cherishing the doctrine of the eternity of evil, — 

A notion not only incompatible with every one of the fun- 
damental propositions of pure orthodoxy, but logically destruc- 
tive of every one of them. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 225 

8anrBtt$ f|* fatter.— A. D. 1812. 

A sheep is lost ! A restless lamb astray, 

Hath wand ered from the fold ! Send forth the cry, 

"'Twill be devoured !" Fierce, ravening monsters lie 

In wait to rend it ! Eouse the shepherd ! Nay ! 

Since the first dawning of the murky day, 

He has been out among the desert hills 

Where lurks the brood whose fang a drop distils, 

Whose touch is death ! He knows the wolf may slay 

His helpless lamb ; far down the precipice 

That jagged rocks may crush its tender form, 

And the Good Shepherd will search on, nor cease 

Till in his arms he bear it safely home. 

O Savior ! Shepherd ! 'mid the wastes of sin, 

Still seek thy wandering sheep and bring the last one in ! 



%nmA jl tfcribl— A. D. 1813. 

Prof. Schenkel is eminent as a theologian, in 
Heidelberg : 

In the common doctrine of the eternal damnation of those 
who persist in unbelief during this life, there lies the recogni- 
tion of a truth — that the sin of this life will influence the life 
to come. But this recognition has been presented in a form 
quite self-contradictory, and essentially injurious to faith. The 
conception that a considerable portion of the human race, 
appointed by God to salvation, is sunk in the endless pain of 
damnation, has in every age brought heavy burdens of difficulty 
on the consciences of all believing Christians. These burdens 
reason has sought to remove, either by supposing the damna- 
tion only hypothetically everlasting, i.e., measured as to com- 
parative lightness or severity by the degree of guilt to be pun- 
15 



226 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

ished. The notion of a conditionally, i. e., under certain circum- 
stances, eternal punishment of finite sins is in itself contradic- 
tory and untenable (§§156, etc., 188, etc.). Another conception, 
therefore, has secured for itself acceptance under different 
forms — the obstinately unbelieving, it is thought, will in con- 
sequence of their unbelief be punished after death with anni- 
hilation, and this of course will put an end to their suffering. 
As sin, however, according to its nature, cannot have infinite 
but merely finite results, the conception of an endless punish- 
ment of sinners, whether it be regarded as unconditional or 
conditional, is to be at once rejected. 

But other weighty reasons stand in the way of the doctrine 
of "eternal damnation." It surely stands particularly in con- 
tradiction to the absolute Divine Nature which is love, to sus- 
pend an absolute evil over those who are appointed to bring 
the Divine Nature to manifestation (§140). By an absolute 
evil inside the world, the harmony of the universe would 
unavoidably be disturbed, and the absolute might and glory of 
goodness be injured. Besides the "eternal" torment endured 
by a finite person, would at last of necessity come to an end, 
since it would destroy its victim. 

Therefore, the doctrine of an eternal damnation of sinners 
is an imaginary instrument of terror intended for coarser nerves. 
The punishment of the unbeliever lies, as is testified in the 
fourth Gospel, in the unbelief itself, in the entire or partial 
destruction of the communion of the personal life with God. 
Personal life is not annihilated by the entire cessation of Divine 
fellowship, but is pressed down almost to the level of brutish 
stupidity, and to work up again from this requires heavy labor 
and long time. This is the "outer darkness," the spiritual 
death which Holy Scripture so startlingly pictures. But even 
into this night the ray -of Divine grace can penetrate, for the 
nature of man maybe injured by sin, but never can be destroyed. 
We believe not in 'death, we believe in eternal life, for God 
hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Isa. 
lxvi : 24 ; Matt, xxv ; Mark ix : 44 ; Matt, xxv : 30 ; Bom. xi : 32 ; 
Jno. iii : 18 ; I.Cor. xv:54 and etc.) — Die Grundlehren des 
Cliristenthums, Leipsic, 1877. [Original translation. 1 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 227 

%rnnz |Wtlzst|.— A. D. 1813. 

Ps. cl : 6. The call to praise lias thus far been addressed 
to persons not mentioned by name, but, as the names of instru- 
ments thus heaped up show, to Israel especially. It is now 
generalized to "the totality of breath," i. e., all the beings who 
are endowed by God with the breath of life (nishmath chay- 
yim), i. e., to all mankind. 

With this full-toned finale the psalter closes. Having risen 
as it were by five steps, in this closing psahn it hovers over the 
blissful summit of the end, where, as Gregory of Nyssa says, 
all creatures, after the disorder and disunion caused by sin 
have been removed, are harmoniously united for one choral 
dance (eis mian chorostasian), and the chorus of mankind con- 
certing with the angel chorus are become one cymbal of divine 
praise, and the final song of victory shall salute God the tri- 
umphant conqueror (toi Tropaiuchoi) with shouts of joy. 
There is no need for any special closing beracha (blessing). 
This whole closing Psalm is such. Nor is there any need even 
of an amen (cvi : 48, comp. I. Chron. xvi : 36). The "Hallelu- 
jah" includes it within itself and exceeds it. — Commentary 
on the Psalms, by Franz Delitzsch, D. D., Professor of Old 
and New Testament Exegesis, Leijjsic. Translation of 
Clark, Edinburgh, 1873. 

Delitzsch has the highest reputation for scholar- 
ship and orthodoxy. 

This same writer, in the same commentary, says, 
Ps. lxxxiii:18, 19: 

The aim of the wish is that they, in the midst of their 
downfall, may lay hold upon the mercy of Jahve as their only 
deliverance. Pirst, they must come to nought, and only by giv- 
ing Jahve the glory will they not be utterly destroyed. In 
view of v. 17, that they may know (as in lix : 14), has not merely 
the sense of perceiving so far as the justice of the punishment is 



228 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

concerned ; the knowledge which is not salvation,is not excluded. 
The end of the matter which the poet wishes to see brought 
about is this, that Jahve, that the God of revelation may 
become the all-exalted one in the consciousness of the nations. 
[Original translation.] 



Equally must be corrected the error of a coordinate dual- 
ism in the award of Blessedness and Damnation. Hence, also 
the representation of the punishment of hell as applied by a 
divine justice wholly severed from love, and hence a punish- 
ment embracing in it no more any element of reformation, as 
if the justice of God could ever at any time become destitute 
of love, and make reformation quite impossible. In fine, the 
idea must be corrected of punishments in hell which never 
end, because the infinite Being injured by sin must eternally 
punish. If one says with Lessing that sin once done can never 
be undone, and therefore can never cease to have consequences, 
inasmuch as he who reforms can never absolutely restore what 
he neglected ; the answer may be given that sin repented of 
may contribute even to the hastening of the process of sancti- 
fication. At all events, the consequences of former sins in the 
case of the penitent and justified serve for chastisement, and 
therefore cease to be punishment. As in fine the peculiar evil 
of punishment is itself one with sin, namely, loss of fellowship 
with God and childlike trust in him, and as these are restored 
in the new birth, yea, even become closer out of gratitude for 
rescuing grace, penal judgment altogether ceases for him who 
becomes alive to the^ religion of redemption, and only where 
this religion ever remains absent must judgment ever abide. 
Life, however, in a religion of mere law is, but an initial and 
transitional condition, which God can never fix if he really 
appoints all to the religion of redemption. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 229 

It lias been found so very difficult to hold simply by the 
eternity of punishment that the dogmatic theologians, think- 
ing of all sorts of alleviation, sometimes speak of a merely 
hypothetical eternity of damnation. God alone, they say, is 
absolutely eternal, and we had beginning in time, and so of 
course the reference can only be to a never ending future — an 
inkling this that the conception of eternity is here unsuitable. 

If the damned have become so by their unbelief, then 
never ending punishment is only tenable in the case of never 
ceasing unbelief, and this is only conceivable by God's abso- 
lute withdrawal of his gracious love, a thing incompatible with 
the idea of God. Just as incompatible is the eternal suffering 
of many brothers with the blesssedness of the rest, for what 
Zwingli objects against the prayers of the blessed for us pil- 
grims on earth must, apart from this application, certainly be 
regarded as valid "that if the blessed know our troubles they 
could not be blessed, since blessedness can only exist in the 
absence of sorrow and care." Schleiermacher carries out this 
thought as follows : — "The blessed could not but have sym- 
pathy for the condition of the damned ; this however, would 
of necessity disturb their blessedness on account of the hope- 
lessness of the condition ; and its influence would be the more 
disturbing the more they looked at the condition in contrast 
with that allotted to themselves once as far astray. " But apart 
from its incompatibility with the idea of God and with the 
brotherly love of the Blessed, eternal damnation is in itself an 
untenable conception. Christianity will in any case put away 
the religious dualism which in the form of Manichaeism endeav- 
ors to press into her. 

Evil, moreover, as such, has no real being coordinate with 
God. It is not substance but only corrupt condition in a being 
which is of God. It is corruption of a finite being, privation 
of its integrity and reality, and can never exist otherwise than 
as perverted condition of an actual creature. Never can it 
appear without such a being and by itself, nor can it ever 
become by itself a substantial being. The sub j ect of sin remains 
however a creature of God, were it ever so corrupted, and 



230 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

though God negatives the sin he yet sustains every substan- 
tial being; wills it, bears it and loves it. He never can hate, 
negative, destroy the corrrupted being as he does its sin — but 
ever seek to heal, rescue, restore, just as the Christian is to 
love even his most malicious enemy, and in this very thing be 
God's child formed in his likeness. 

The (accidentally so-called) Apokatastasis of all, even of 
Satan, has therefore pressed itself on devout Christian teach- 
ers, and in spite of ecclesiastical rejection, seeks ever anew 
entrance into the creed. Even Zwingli remembers (Op. vii : 
124) that "the substance of the evil angels is simple, and, 
as such, good, their morals only being godless, though not 
equally so in all; and that therefore Origen seems not unreas- 
onable when he says that at the future judgment some of these 
angels would return to grace." The objection brought against 
the ultimate universalism of Origen which deduces the final 
deliverance of all from the boundless extent of the divine com- 
passion does not well bear examination. 

As regards acquittal and condemnation, and the result- 
ing happiness or misery, the principle always holds good; 
whoever becomes alive to the religion of redemption is also 
justified, and has peace and restored fellowship with God ; 
while he that persists in the religion of law is condemned and 
separated from God, has an JEgo to which the law as an out- 
ward despotic commandment prescribes servile tasks, so that 
obeying he remains away from God, and transgressing he 
stands directly opposed to God. Here, however, we cannot set 
up the notion of eternal punishment in the sense of never end- 
ing, but must preserve the true sense of eternity; for it stauds 
unalterably settled beyond all time that the religion of law 
necessarily issues in judgment. As this, however, is but the 
first form of the religious relationship to God, merely a state 
of transition pointing 'away beyond itself, and as the grace of 
God has appointed all to sonship and keeps intent on redeem- 
ing every one from legal servitude which works itself out into 
misery, and on bringing every one to sonship through Christ, 
it must be that at last the finite creature shall be freely won by 



i 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 231 

infinite grace, and that a man still remaining condemned in 
the religion of law is to be viewed as one not yet arrived at 
his destination. — Original translation, Vol. II, Christllche 
Glaubenslehre, Leipsic, 1877. [Prof. Schweizer is Professor 
of Theology in Zurich.] 



\®x. %tspt Jm lw* 



It is impossible that God will punish eternally. He could 
not do it out of mere revenge, that it is utterly impossible to 
believe. He need not do it to vindicate his law, since that is bet- 
ter provided for in the happiness of those who do well than in 
the misery of those who do ill. He will not do it to deter the 
guiltless, since his perfect justice could never admit an eternal 
wrong, in the case of even the meanest of his creatures, to 
achieve even the greatest good, for the allotments of God, 
even to the guilty and castaway, are guided by infinite justice 
and eternal beneficence and love. I believe, then, that in our 
Father's house beyond, there are many mansions, places suited 
for every grade of spiritual and moral condition, that all little 
children go at once to God, "their angels" beholding his face 
forever ; and that all sorrowing, struggling, ignorant, and care- 
worn people, will find education, and light, and a helpful hand 
hereafter. To believe anything else than this would be to 
accuse God of cruelty, would be to make our life a curse, and 
make us all feel that it would have been better for us that we 
had never been born. I believe that this world is only one of 
the rooms in the great Father's house, that in the other world, 
as well as in this, God's "tender mercies are overall his works," 
and that whatever men and creeds may say, our God is love, 
and will be love to all men and in all worlds forever. (Leices- 
ter, Eng.) 



232 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

\m, f, Jnntu Jhdfy J». J., «. J. 

Our Lord Jesus Christ, when he speaks of God as "our 
Father in heaven," and in many other expressions (e. g. Matt. 
v : 44-48 ; Luke vi : 36), appeals to the emotions and feelings of 
the human mind for language wherewith to convey to us his 
own conception of the moral nature of God. How is this plain 
fact in the Christian teachings to be reconciled with state- 
ments which would represent the Almighty Being as doing that 
from which our nature leads at once to shrink with aversion 
and horror ? How is the clear and constant representation of 
Gocl by Christ, as "our heavenly Father" to be reconciled with 
a doctrine which makes him do that which not merely no 
human father would do to his child, but no human being what- 
ever, possessed of anything like a human heart, could do even 
to his bitterest enemy ? What should we think of a man who 
should consign one who had injured him to torment for his 
life in a place of fire and brimstone, if such a thing were pos- 
sible ? And what must we think of a God who would consign 
his creatures who had offended him to torments, not of life- 
long, but of everlasting duration ? who should even keep them 
alive to no other end than that they might endure the fierce- 
ness of hisVrath for ever and ever ? We know that it is a prop- 
erty of fire to consume and destroy, and that if our present 
bodies were subjected to the power of even ordinary fire they 
would quickly perish. This would be a merciful alternative 
to those who are doomed to hell. But the common belief does 
not allow them to have it. It assumes that the body will be 
continually renewed and strengthened, or so changed that it 
shall not perish. The lost shall not be allowed to die, but 
shall be maintained in life able to feel and to endure for untold 
ages — ages which shall never be exhausted, never come to an 
end — able to feel and to endure the unspeakable anguish of 
the fire which is not quenched, and the worm which dieth not. 
And this destiny is reserved, or shall we say appointed, for 
inconceivable multitudes of men by him who is their "Father 
in heaven," a "God of mercy," and a "God of love," and the 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 233 

Gospel in which it is said to be announced to us is often spoken 
of as a Gospel of "good tidings of great joy which shall be to 
all people." 

If all this be true of God, surely man had better not be 
told to imitate him, and never can love him with any genuine, 
durable love. He may, indeed, fear or even hate the author 
of his existence, but how on this theory of an eternal hell, 
he can love him, we are at a loss to conceive. 

* * A true faith in the living God will not forget that it 
may be even a suggestion of that inspiration which "giveth us 
understanding" which is impelling so large a number of devout 
and thoughtful men to rebel against and throw aside the old 
belief in an endless hell as something essentially heathenish, 
and out of harmony with any right feeling of reverence in us 
toward the God and Father of Jesus Christ. The ever-pres- 
ent Spirit, let us nothing doubt, can speak to us even now, as 
of old to patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, and if he should 
be leading us to see that much in their beliefs was wrong, the 
mere product of an age of ignorance, unworthy of him whose 
name is Love, and Mercy, and Holiness, surely it is our part, 
not to resist or despise, but gratefully to acquiesce in this 
advance toward a clearer, fuller apprehension of divine truth. 

The Rev. G. Vance Smith, B. A., D. D. and Ph. D., 

London, Eng., was a member of the English Com- 
mission for the Revision of the Bible, and Principal 
of the Presbyterian College, Caermarthen. 



JSisJprp ©ufamr.— A. D. 1814. 

In the last seven years I have carefully studied it, with an 
earnest desire to know the truth of God upon the matter, and 
with an humble desire for the guidance and teaching of the 
Holy Spirit in the search for it. I now declare that I can no 



234 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

longer maintain or give utterance to the doctrine of future 
punishment — that I dare not dogmatize at all on the matter — 
that I can only lay my hand upon my mouth, and leave it in 
the hands of the merciful God. 



%v&$* "SLrmtw* $m*s$ fimmu— A. D. 1814. 

This celebrated French statesman declares : 

The guilty will be punished ; this alone concerns us, since 
this alone concerns the justifying of Providence ; the nature 
of the punishment is to us indifferent. We know that it will 
be proportioned to the guilt, for the Judge is infallible. We 
ought to hope that God will mingle mercy with justice and 
grant to the guilty the opportunity of winning amelioration by 
repentance.. Punishment serves a two-fold purpose, — expia- 
tion of the guilt and reformation of the guilty. We are asked 
whether punishment will endure eternally ? It is a question 
which should not be introduced by itself into philosophy. The 
eternity of punishment destroys one of the two objects of pun- 
ishment, purification, reformation; it exaggerates the other 
beyond possibility, for there is no sin committed in time which 
calls for an eternal punishment. There is no principle of rea- 
son which either leads to the doctrine of the eternity of pun- 
ishment or even admits of it. — La Religion Nationelle, p. 304- 
1857. 



Take the question upon which modern thought is more 
troubled than any other. Take the doctrine in which most of 
you were brought up — that every man who is not saved theo- 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 235 

logically will go to hell, and that hell is a wonderful torment, 
a constant fire, whereunto a man, forever and forever, for the 
brief mistakes and sins of three score years and ten, must be 
condemned. I am told this is in the Scriptures. I can't find 
it ; but if it were there I would not believe it. I can't say that 
I ever believed it. I was told that it was so, and I have no 
doubt I said it was so, but whether I had then ever examined 
the matter I hardly know. But now I disbelieve it. If this is 
backsliding I will backslide. 

Well, how came we ever to doubt this tremendous doc- 
trine? Not that any commentator with marvelous exegesis 
showed us that the text did not mean that ; — for I am but little 
interested in the quibble that the fire burns forever, but that 
the thing put into the fire burns only so long as it is capable 
of burning. What has put hell fire out, is the better under- 
standing of God, the glorious growth of science, an insight 
into the eternal principles of law, and a fuller comprehension 
of the divineness of God's love. The love of God has con- 
quered the assertion of orthodoxy. — Sermons on "Disputed 
Points," p. 65, London, 1878. 



Ctyttrfes parity— A. D. 1814. 

The great novelist declares : 

Eternal punishment ! if it is not a fable, who has earned 
better than I am earning if I go on. It is a fable, it must be 
so. Philosophers always said so, and now even divines have 
given it up. From "Put Yourself in his Place," chap, xxiii. 



golttt ©ouper Tail— A. D. 1815. 

As the burning bush on Sinai did the shepherd seer surprise, 
All shall see the star of Mercy on the wings of prayer arise, 
To guide the last- f orgiven to the gates of paradise. 



236 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

gtttttt |mfaj+— A. D. 1816. 



The author of "Festus" causes the great truth of 
the final redemption of man to burn along the lines 
of his thought 

They who read not in the blest belief, 

That all souls may be saved, read to no end; 
"We were made to be saved. 

Again : 

Nought eternal is 
But that which is of God. All pain and woe 
Are therefore finite. 



I come to repay sin with holiness, 
And death with immortality ; man's sou* 
"With God's Spirit ; all evil with all good. 
All men have sinned ; and as for all I died, 
All men are saved. Oh ! not a single soul, 
Less than the countless all can satisfy 
The infinite triumph which to me belongs. 

The hour is named 
When seraph, cherub, angel, saint, man, fiend, 
Made pure and unbelievably uplift 
Above their present state — drawn up to God, 
Like dew into the air — shall be all heaven ; 
And all souls shall be in God. 

Again : 

Thus heavenward all things tend, for all were once 
Perfect, and all must be at length restored, 
So God has greatly purposed ; who would else, 
In his dishonored works himself endure 
Dishonor, and be wronged without redress. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 237 



Again : 



But human nature is not infinite, 
And, therefore, cannot suffer, endlessly 

Evil is 
Good in another way we are not skilled in. 

And though ye died, 
And fell, and fell again, and again died, 
There is a life to come, a rise for all, 
A life to come forever, and a rise 
Perpetual as the Spring is in the year. 

Stay, Spirit ! All created things unmade ; 

It suits not the eternal laws of good, 

That evil be immortal. In all space 

Is joy and glory, and the gladdened stars 

Exultant in the sacrifice of sin, 

And of all human matter in themselves, 

Leap forth as though to welcome earth to heaven, 

Leap forth and die. All nature disappears. 

Shadows are passed away. Through all is light. 

Man is as high above temptation now, — 

And where by Grace he always shall remain, 

As ever sun o'er sea ; and sin is burned 

In hell to ashes with the dust of death. 

The worlds themselves are but as dreams within 

Their souls who lived in them, and thou art null, 

And thy vocation useless, gone with them. 

Therefore shall heaven rejoice in thee again, 

And the lost tribes of angels, who with thee 

Wedded themselves to woe, and all who dwell 

Around the dizzy centers of all worlds, 

Again be blessed with the blessedest. 

Lo ! ye are all restored, rebought, rebrought 

To heaven by him who cast ye forth, your God. 

Receive ye tenfold of all gilts and powers. 



238 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

And thou, who cam'st to heaven to claim one soul, 
Eemain possessed by all. The sons of bliss 
Shall welcome thee again, and all thy host, ' 
Whereof thou first in glory as in woe — 
In brightness as in darkness erst — shalt shine. 
Take, Lucifer, thy place. This day art thou 
Redeemed to archangelic state. Bright child 
Of morning, once again thou shinest fair 
O'er all the starry ornaments of light. 

Lucifer. — The highest and the humblest I of all 

The beings thou hast made, eternal Lord ! 

Angel. — Behold, they come, the legions of the lost, 
Transformed already by the bare behest, 
Of God our Maker, to the purest form 
Of seraph brightness. 

The Restord Angels. — His be all the praise ! 

And ours submissive thanks. When Evil had done 
Its worst, then God most blessed us and forgave. 
Oh, he hath triumphed over all the world, 
In mercy over death, and earth, and hell ! 

Son of God.— All God hath made are saved. Heaven is com- 
plete ! 



My Lord, my God ! 
Thine is the Spirit which commands and smiles ; 
The soul which serves and suffers : — thine the stars 
Tabled upon thy bosom like the stones 
Oracular of light, on the priest's breast ; 
Thine the minutest mote the moonbeams shew ! 
Let but thy words come true, and all are blest; 
Be but thine infinite intents fulfilled, — 
And what shall foil the covenanted oath 






A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 239 

Whereon the mounded earth is based ? — and lo ! 
The whole at last redeemed and glorified. 

— Angel World. 



%mm daijfortt (SforL 

Clark is one of the most popular of moaern som; 
writers : 

We shall meet again in the By-and-by, 
Where the mountains gleam in the morning sky, 
We shall meet again in the land of love, 
Our Father's home above. 

Clio.: — We shall meet again, we shall meet again, 
In the beautiful Isles of the By-and-by, 
We shall meet again, we shall meet again, 
In the Isles of the By-and-by. 

In the balmly Isles where the angels roam, 
By the crystal seas of our Father's home, 
There are forms of grace and of beauty rare 
And the ones we have lost are there. 

We must part in tears when the twilight dies, 
On the far-off hills of our evening skies, 
We shall meet in joy where our loved dear stand, 
In the gates of the morning land. 

We shall fall asleep where the Autumn grieves 
O'er the faded flowers and the falling leaves, 
We shall wake again where the angels sing, 
In the bloom of eternal Spring. 



24:0 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

gtfyt 0. fim$.— A. D. 1816. 

There is a saying of the ancient sages, — 

No noble human thought, 
However buried in the dust of ages, 

Can ever come to naught. 
"With kindred faith that knows no base dejection, 
• Beyond the sage's scope 
I see afar the final resurrection 

Of every glorious hope. 



*fc Jrwrf? JKste*,— A. D. 1816-1855. 

The authoresses of "Jane Eyre," "Wuthering 
Heights," "Shirley," "Poems," etc., have repeatedly 
developed the doctrine we cherish. Witness the fol- 
lowing from "Music on Christmas Morning," by Acton 

Bell: 

With them I celebrate his birth — 

Glory to God, in highest heaven, 
Good will to men, and peace on earth, 

To us a Savior-King is given; 
Our God is come to claim his own, 
And Satan's power is overthrown ! 

A sinless God for sinful men, 
Descends to suffer and to bleed; 
Hell must renounce its empire then ; 
The price is paid, the world is freed, 
And Satan^s self must now confess 
That Christ has earned a right to bless. 

Now holy peace may smile from heaven, 

And heavenly Truth from earth shall spring, 






A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 241 

The captive's galling bonds are riven. 

For our Kedeemer is our king ; 
And he that gave his blood for men 
Will lead us home to God again ! 



Tou may rejoice to think yourselves secure; 

You may be grateful for the gift divine, — 
That grace unsought which made your black hearts pure, 

And fits your earth-born souls in heaven to shine. 

But is it sweet to look around, and view 
Thousands excluded from that happiness 

Which they deserve at least as much as you — 
Their faults not greater, nor their virtues less ? 

And wherefore should you love your God the more 
Because to you alone his smiles are given, — 

Because he chose to pass the many o'er 
And only bring the favored few to heaven. 

And wherefore should your hearts more grateful prove 

Because for all the Savior did not die? 
Is yours the God of Justice and of Love ? 

And are your bosoms warm with charity ? 

Say, does your heart expand to all mankind? 

And would you ever to your neighbor do — 
The weak, the strong, the enlightened, and the blind, — 

As you would have your neighbor do to you? 

And when you, looking on your fellow-men, 

Behold them doomed to endless misery, 
How can you talk of joy and rapture then? 

May God withhold such cruel joy from me! 

That none deserve eternal bliss, I know; 
Unmerited the grace in mercy given ; 
16 



24:2 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

But none shall sink to everlasting woe, 

That have not well deserved the wrath of heaven. 

And oh, there lives within my heart, 

A hope long nursed by me ; 
And should its cheering ray depart, 

How dark my soul would be ! 

That as in Adam all have died, 

In Christ shall all men live ; 
And ever round his throne abide 

Eternal praise to give. 

That even the wicked shall at last 

Be fitted for the skies ; 
And when their dreadful doom is past 

To life and light arise. 

I ask not how remote the day, 

Nor what the sinner's woe, 
Before their dross is purged away; 

Enough for me to know, 

That when the cup of wrath is drained, 

The metal purified, 
They'll cling to what they once disdained 

And live by him that died. 



"And remember, Helen," continued she, solemnly, "'the 
wicked shall be turned into hell, and they that forget God.' " 
And suppose, even, that he should continue to love you, and 
you him, and that you should pass through life together with 
tolerable comfort, how will it be in the end, when you see 
Yourselves parted forever ; you perhaps taken into eternal bliss, 
and he cast into the lake thut burneth with unquenchable fire 
— there forever to— "Not forever," I exclaimed, "'only till he 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 243 

has paid the uttermost farthing,' for, 'if any man's work abide 
not the fire he shall suffer loss, yet himself shall be saved; — 
but so as by fire,' and he that is able to subdue all things unto 
himself, will have all men to be saved, and will, 'in the fulness 
of time gather in one all things in Christ Jesus, who tasted 
death for every man, and in whom God will reconcile all 
things to himself, whether they be things in earth, or things 
in heaven.' " 

"O Helen! where did you learn all this?" 

"In the Bible, aunt. I have searched it through, and 
found nearly thirty passages, all tending to support the same 
theory." 

"And is that the use you make of your Bible ? And did 
you find no passages tending to prove the danger and falsity 
of such a belief ? " 

"No ; I found, indeed, some passages that, taken by them- 
selves, might seem to contradict that opinion ; but they will all 
bear a different construction to that which is commonly given, 
and in most, the only difficulty is in the word we translate 
'everlasting' or 'eternal.' I don't know the Greek,' but I believe 
it strictly means for ages, and might signify either endless or 
long enduring. And as for the danger of the belief, I would 
not publish it abroad, if I thought any poor wretch would be 
likely to presume upon it to his own destruction, but it is a 
glorious thought to cherish in one's own heart, and I would 
not part with it for all the world can give." 

Again: 

"O Frederic, none can imagine the miseries, bodily and 
mental, of that death-bed. How could I endure to think that 
that poor, trembling soul was hurried away to everlasting tor- 
ment ? it would drive me mad ! But thank God ! I have hope 
— not only on a vague dependence on the possibility that pen- 
itence and pardon might have reached him at the last, but 
from the blessed confidence that, through whatever purging 
fires the erring spirit may be doomed to pass, whatever fate 



244 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

awaits it, still it is not lost, and God, who hatetk nothing he 
hath made, will bless it in the end!" — Tenant of Wildfell 
Hall. 



Mkm$ + —A. D. 1817. 

The learned author of "Christian Dogmatics" — 
Professor of Theology in the University of Utrecht, 
concludes that the New Testament teaches "an everr 
lasting Too Late," but he confesses — p. 807, "Wat- 
son's Translation," Scribner: 

From Origen to not a few Christians of our age we see the 
doctrine of the Apokatastasis confessed with inner conviction 
and warmth, and within his own heart many a one hears a 
voice which pleads in favor of the eventual general blessedness 
of all. The idea of an absolutely endless perdition has about 
it for our natural feelings something indescribably harsh, and 
appears, indeed, absolutely irreconcilable with all which we 
believe of God's redeeming love. 

He also thinks God willing and able to conquer 
sin ; that the idea of God's kingdom is of a universe 
of blissful creatures, and that Paul and John "waken 
and cherish" a "silent expectation" of universal salva- 
tion, and says : 

On all these grounds one would almost feel justified in 
expunging, from the door of woe, the terrible inscription : — 
"All hope abandon, ye who enter here" ; and substituting for 
it the jubilant chorus of sensuous joy : — "Allen Sunden soil 
vergeben, und die Holle nicht mehr sein" ; all sinners shall be 
forgiven, and hell be no more." 



A CLOU!} OF WITNESSES. 245 

-A. D. 1818. 



One of the most vigorous of modern writers, J. A. 
Froude, M. A., in his "Nemesis of Faith," gives vent 
to the feeling which is now so general in churches of 
all communions, of horror and disgust in reference to 
eternal punishment. He says : 

I know but one man, of more than miserable intellect, 
who, in these modern times, has dared defend eternal punish- 
ment, on the score of justice, and that is Leibnitz ; — a man, 
who, if I know him rightly, chose the subject from its diffi- 
culty, as an opportunity for the display of his genius, and cared 
so little for the truth, that his conclusions did not cost his heart 
a pang, or wring a single tear from him. No ; if I am to be a 
minister of religion, I must teach the poor people that they 
have a Father in heaven, not a tyrant ; one who loves them all 
beyond power of heart to conceive ; who is sorry when they do 
wrong, not angry ; whom they are to love and dread, not with 
caitiff coward fear, but with deepest awe and reverence, as the 
all-pure, all-good, all-holy. I could never fear a God, who kept 
a hell prison-house. No ; not though he flung me there because 
I refused. 

The young Episcopal clergyman, who is the hero 
of the book, finds the absurdity of endless punish- 
ment an impassable barrier between his profession 
and his duty. 



Jtrimt W(nvbmirm. 

Acton Warburton, the eloquent author of the 

"Footsteps of the Normans," says : 



246 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

He (the Norman) looks forward to the time when he shall 
complete that acquaintance, where they have preceded, and 
await him in 

The land of souls, beyond the sable shore, 

and knowing that the Sun of Mercy shines beyond the clouds 
of ancestral error, he would fain hope that one day would 
unite them all, — 

No wanderer lost, 
A family in heaven. 



;mtm \m$tl Jtxmll— A. D. 1819. 

O chime of sweet Saint Charity 
Peal soon that Easter morn, 

When Christ for all shall risen be, 
And in all hearts new born ! 

That Pentecost when utterance clear 

To all men shall be given, 
When all shall say, My Brother, here, 

And hear My Son in heaven ! 
Though earth swing wide of God's intent, 

And though no man nor nation 
Will move with one consent 

In heavenly gravitation, 
Yet by one Sun is every orbit bent. 



O wandering dim on the extremest edge 

Of God's bright providence, whose spirits sigh 

Drearily in you, like the Winter sedge 

That shivering o'er the dead pool stiff and dry, 

A thin, sad voice, when the bold wind roars by, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 24:7 

From the clear North of Duty, — 
Still by cracked arch and broken shaft I trace 
That here was once a shrine and holy place 

Of the Supernal Beauty, — 
A child's play-altar reared of stones and moss, 
With wilted flowers for offering laid across, 

Mute recognition of the all-ruling Grace. 

One band ye cannot break, — the force that clips 
And grasps your circles to the central light ; 

Yours is the prodigal comet's long ellipse, 
Self exiled to the farthest verge of night; 
Yet strives with you no less that inward might ; 

No sin hath e'er imbruted 
The god in you the creed-dimmed eye eludes ; 
The law looks not to have its solitudes 

By bigot feet polluted ; — 
Yet they who watch your God-compelled return 
May see your happy perihelion burn 

Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods. 



jj hio i iyii i otre * 

She stood outside the gate of heaven and saw them entering 

in, 
A world-long train of shining ones, all washed in blood from 

sin. 

* * * * * * * 

And when into the glory the last of all did go, 
"Thank God! There is a heaven," she cried, "though mine is 
endless woe." 

The angel of the golden gate, said, "Where then dost thou 
dwell, 



248 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

And who art thou that enterest not ?" "A soul escaped from 

hell." 
"Who knows to bless with prayer like thine, in hell can never 

be; 
God's angel could not if he would bar up this door from thee." 
She left her sin outside the gate, and meekly entered there, 
Breathed free the blessed air of heaven, and knew her native 

air. 



Professor of Theology, Jena : 

Along with the idea of an eternal death even of a defini- 
tive damnation of the godless to eternal pain, there is also 
found, especially in Paul, the opposite expectation of a future 
conversion and blessedness of all. — Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, 
846. 



-A. D. 1819. 



John Kuskin, the greatest of art critics, and the 
greatest living master of English, has so expressed 
himself as to be entitled to rank among our "Cloud of 
Witnessess." In his "The Lord's Prayer and the 
Church — Letters Addressed to the Clergy, " he says : 

And the first clause of it — the Lord's Prayer — of course 
rightly explained, gives as the ground of what is surely a mighty 
part of the Gospel — its first great commandment, namely, that 
we have a Father whom we can love, and are required to love, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 249 

and to desire to be with him in heaven, wherever that may be. 
and to declare that we have snch a loving Father, whose mercy 
is over all his works and whose will and law is so lovely and 
lovable that it is sweeter than honey, and more precious than 
gold, and to those who can taste and see that the Lord is good 
— this surely is a most pleasant and glorious good message and 
spell to bring to men — as distinguished from the evil message 
and accursed spell that Satan has brought to the nations of the 
world instead of it that they have no Father, but only a con- 
suming fire ready to devour them unless they are delivered 
from its raging flame by some scheme of pardon for all, for 
which they are to be thankful, not to the Father but to the 
Son. 



JM^iut fa$ <Utro$.— A. D. 1819-1861. 

Ah, yet, when all is thought and said, 
The heart still overrules the head ; 
Still what we hope we must believe, 
And what is given us receive ; 
Must still believe for still we hope 
That in a world of larger scope, 
What here is faithfully begun 
Will be completed, not undone. 



H|>it 'Wftxkmtu— A. D. 1819. 

This original poet thus chants : 

All, all for Immortality ! 

Love, like the light, silently wrapping all ! 

Nature's amelioration blessing all ! 



250 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

The blossoms, fruits of ages — orchards divine and certain ; 

Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripen- 
ing. 

Give me, O God, to sing that thought ! 

Give me— give him or her I love this quenchless faith 

In thy ensemble — whatever else withheld, withhold not from 
us 

Belief in plan of thee enclosed in Time and Space, 

Health, peace, salvation universal. 

Is it a dream ? 

Nay, but the lack of it a dream, 

And, failing it, life's lore and wealth a dream, 

And all the world a dream ! 



am* Tfatrar.— A. D. 1819. 



In "The To-morrow of Death" this French scient- 
ist teaches that each soul undergoes many reincarna- 
tions in human bodies, growing purer, until at length, 
no longer residence in flesh is necessary, and they all 
find their final home in the sun. He very truly says, 
chap, iv : 

The explanation that we give of the punishment of the 
wicked is certainly preferable to the hell of Christianity, which 
is at once atrocious and absurd, [meaning, of course, the "ortho- 
dox hell. "] These reincarnations must be repeated until the 
faculties of the soul are sufficiently developed, or its instincts 
sufficiently improved, so that the man can raise himself above 
the common level of* our species. Then, only, this soul, fit- 
tingly purified, freed from its imperfections, can quit the earth, 
and after the death of the body, soar into space, and enter that 
new organism which succeeds that of man in the hierarchy of 
Nature. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 251 

Referring to the miserable lot of many, he says : 

God would be unjust and wicked if he imposed so miser- 
able an existence upon beings who have done nothing to incur 
it, and who have not asked for it. 

He reconciles such facts by supposing that 

Our presence on such and such a part of earth is no longer 
the effect of a caprice of Fate, or the result of chance, it is 
merely a station in the long journey that we make through the 
world. . . Our sojourn on the earth is, then, only a kind of 
probation, imposed on us by Nature, and during which we have 
to refine our souls, to free them from earthly ties, and faults 
that weigh them down and keep them from rising, glorious, to 
the etherial spheres. . . Bad men, we think, are those who have 
lived before, are going through another year in the same rank. 
They will be thus delayed till their souls are fit to rise in the hier- 
archy of beings. . . Chemistry, since Lavoisier, has brought to 
light a grand truth, — that nothing of the elements of matter is 
lost ; that bodies change their form, while the material element, 
the body pure and simple, is imperishable and indestructible^ 
and will always be found in unimpaired integrity, in spite of 
its thousand transformations. If this be true that nothing is 
lost in the material world, it is equally certain that in the sp ir- 
itual world there is no loss, only transformation. Thus noth- 
ing is lost in material or immaterial beings ; and we may place 
this new principle of moral philosophy by the side of that 
principle of chemical philosophy established by the genius of 
Lavoisier. — Chap, ccvll. 

Why, among all men and all peoples, are the eyes turned 
to heaven in solemn moments, in bursts of passion, in the 
anguish of pain ? Was any one ever known at such times to 
gaze with the same intensity upon the ground, or whatever 
stretches beneath the feet ? It is always to heaven that our 
eyes and our hearts turn. The dying bend their failing sight 
heavenward ; and toward the celestial realms we look longingly, 
when wrapped in one of those vague reveries that we have just 



252 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

described. "We may believe that this universal tendency to 
look towards heaven is an intuition of what lies beyond our 
earthly life, a natural revelation of the domain that will be ours 
some day, and which stretches into the celestial realms, to the 
very bosom of ether. 



©Ijarfe ^ms*ta| + — A. D. 1819-1875. 

Canon Farrar says : 

Canon Kingsley's opinions may be found in "The Water 
of Life," p. 76, etc., and are repeatedly referred to in his "Biog- 
raphy." It has been asserted that he abandoned these opin- 
ions. So far is this from being the case, that, had he lived, he 
intended to preach them with greater distinctness. 

"We do not deny that the wages of sin is death. We do 
not deny the necessity of punishment, the certainty of punish- 
ment. We see it working awfully enough around us in this 
life ; we believe it may work in still more awful forms in the 
life to come. Only tell us not that it must be endless, and 
thereby destroy its whole purpose, and, as we think, its whole 
morality. We, too, believe in an eternal fire ; but we believe 
its existence to be not a curse but a blessing, and a Gospel, 
seeing that that fire is God himself, who taketh away the sins 
of the world, and of whom it is therefore written, "Our God is 
a consuming fire."— Sermon on the Shaking of Heaven and 
Earth. 



I, «, Ifafcmfc.— A. D. 1819. 

The sentiments of Dr. Holland on this subject are 
unknown to the compiler of this volume, but "Bitter- 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 253 

sweet" contains several passages that belong to these 
pages. In "A Song of Faith" we are told that 

Evil is only the slave of God. 

Kuth says : 

If evil live 
Against God's will, evil is king of all, 
And they do well who worship Lucifer. 

And David declares 

Evil is not a mystery, but a means 
Selected from the infinite resource 
To make the most of me. 

God never fails in an experiment, 
Nor tries experiment upon a race 
But to educe its highest style of life, 
And sublimate its issues. 



fantJj §♦ ^irgmtat i^u + — A. D. 1819. 

Oh, yes ! there is joy in sincerely believing, 

No heart that is faithless can dream of, or know ; 
There is strength in the thought that our souls are receiving 

Such wealth as a Father alone can bestow. 
Then away with the dogma that sin is eternal ! 

It dims the bright glow of Immanual's name ; 
For it was not to build up a kingdom infernal 

That J*esus, the friend of the sorrowful, came. 

It was not to lay in the path of the blinded 

High walls over which they must stumble and fall 

That he came, all sublime and serene, and high-minded, 
And laid down his life a redemption for all ! 



254 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

It was not to slaughter, in anger and blindness, 
The wandering lambs that were dying of cold, 

That he lifted them up to his bosom of kindness, 
And brought them all home to their rest in the fold ! 

He is good, and the heart that serenely reposes, 

And lays down his burthens to rest in his ]ove, 
Will find that the door of salvation ne'er closes, 

So long as one sinner continues to love. 
He loves the young lambs though afar they are straying, 

He seeks out the weary with tender concern ; 
Oh hear his soft voice in the wilderness praying, 

"To the arms of your Savior, poor lost ones, return!" 



frtfettmi % f* yfmttfttr^— A. D. 1821. 

This brilliant scholar and contributor to the Con- 
temporary Review has written much on this theme. 
We have only room for these lines : 

Are there no souls behind the veil 
That need the help of guiding hand ; 
Weak hearts that cannot understand 

Why earth's poor dreams of heaven must fail? 

Are there no prison doors to ope, 

No lambs to gather in the fold, 

No treasure-house of new and old, 
To meet each wish, and crown each hope? 

We know not ; but if life be there 
The outcome and the crown of this, 
What else can make their perfect bliss 

Than in the Master's work to share ? 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 255 

Besting, but not in slumberous ease, 

Working, but not in wild unrest, 

Still ever blessing, ever blest, 
They see us, as the Father sees. 



Ipfcrat ?*tttmi T|tt$$rfi — A. D. 1821. 

William Kussell, and his successor as editor of the 
Scotsman, Dr. Wallace, have set forth the great doc- 
trine in that greatest of Scottish papers. 



H. \ in* 

The celebrated author of "Enigmas of Life," 
"Creed of Christendom," "Rocks Ahead," etc., in the 
first edition of "Enigmas" looked forward to an eter- 
nal separation between the righteous and the wicked. 
Frances Power Cobbe reviewed the work, demolish- 
ing his positions in her great essay "The Life After 
Death," whereupon Mr. Greg admitted the force of the 
strictures, and added a "Postscriptum" to the 7th edi- 
tion of his "Enigmas," in the course of which he says : 

Given a hell of torment and despair for millions of our 
friends and fellowmen, can the good enjoy heaven, except by 
becoming bad, without becoming transformed ? Miraculously 
changed, and changed deplorably for the worst ? without, in a 
word, putting on,along with the white garments of the redeemed, 
a coldness and hardness of heart, a stony, supercilious egotism, 



256 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

which on earth would have justly forfeited all claim to regard, 
endurance or esteem ? * * Assuming the hell of theologians, 
those affections must be foregone or trampled down in heaven, 
or else heaven will itself become a hell. As a condition, or a 
consequence, of being admitted to the presence of God, we 
should have to preserve the little that is godlike in our com- 
position. Do not these simple reflections suffice to disperse 
into thin air the current notions of a world of everlasting pain? 



This splendid production is from an unknown 
author. It appeared originally in the London Leader, 
an English publication, and deserves to be printed in 
letters of gold. 

The Seraph Uriel as the records tell 
That angels write, from his allegiance fell; 
And he who rules the world beyond the sun- 
He in whom love and wisdom are made one — 
Did hurl from him his royalty of light, 
To dwell amid the souls that wail in night. 
Then Uriel felt his beauty fade away, 
And a great grief lay on hini day by day; 
But, as his splendor withered for his sin, 
Stronger and brighter grew the love within; 
And so in silence in his fiery jail, 
He stood, rejoiced that love could yet prevail. 

One day the ancient Gods that howl below 
Accosted Uriel : — "Uriel, this great woe 
Will never pass ; the stars will seek the sun, 
The universe shall end as it begun; 
But through the endless circle of the years 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES 257 

That angels know, shall neither hopes nor fears 
Visit the dwellers in this world of fire ; 
Therefore, when hate and anguish shall inspire, 
Ease your full heart with curses deep as ours ; 
Your love will never win you Eden's bowers." 

Then Uriel answered : — "He who made the night, 
Crown'd it with stars and with the pure delight 
Of the clear moon ; he who made all things frail, 
Decrees that sovereign beauty shall prevail. 
There is no sorrow, friends, but it has still 
Some soul of sweetness in it ; there's no ill 
But comes from him who made it, and is good 
As fruit in season, leaf in budding wood. 
But if in this drear world all hope were vain — 
If penance were eternal — if such pain 
He could inflict and I endure — my will 
"Would be to love, thro' all his cruel ill. 

He ended ; and the ancient Gods below 
Ceased howling, when they saw the sweet, calm glow, 
That wander'd over that good angel's face, 
Making a moonlight round them, till the grace 
That was in his brave bearing and mild speech 
Melted the hatred from the hearts of each; 
And they stood up, and through the streets of hell 
The sound of countless voices rose and fell, 
Praising the silent soul that dwells above, 
Singing, "We love thee, Lord, for thou art love." 

Then the dark dungeon burst its grates and bars, 
And light came glowing in from suns and stars, 
Lapsing down dreadful rifts; the shapes below 
Saw fragments of blue sky above them glow, 
Like windows through the rents ; they felt the air 
Cooling their branded foreheads; everywhere 
They saw the faces of young angels shine, 

17 



258 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

And golden fingers point to thrones divine, 
While a low whisper murmured like the breeze 
That comes and goes on tops of mulberry trees; 
And thus it said:— "Oh, loving angels, rise, 
Borne by strong love through the unfolding skies, 
There is no sin, no sorrow, and no hel], 
But they must cease, where hearts love long and well, 
"Where lips praise God in anguish and confess 
There's love in pain — that even wrong can bless." 

The whisper ceased ; and every soul, forgiven 
By Love for Love's sweet sake, went up to heaven. 
Each stood before his throne — fair, glad and calm ; 
And God sat in the midst, and heard the psalm 
Winch joyful angels raised in chorus bland; 
And Uriel sat like God, at God's right hand. 



JSiupfort JL Jruufcij* 

This famous preacher, chaplain to the Queen, 
abounds with the sentiment of Universalism. It is 
difficult to select from Stopford A. Brooke on Univer- 
salism unless we copy all he says, for every sermon 
is inspired with the spirit of our doctrine. He says : 

But since God has been united in Christ, not to a few, but 
to the whole of the human race — this Fatherhood is necessar- 
ily universal. All doctrines of favoritism are at once expelled 
by this ; all despair of races is at once destroyed ; all hopeless- 
ness for those who suffer and those who are evil, perishes ; all 
contempt for our brother men is no more ; for all men are 
divine in God since they have been in Christ. Thus follows 
the necessary immortality of all mankind. Men are not becom- 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 259 

itig immortal — they are immortal now. Death, annihilation, 
must touch God himself ere it can touch the meanest human 
soul, for al] the race is hid in 'Christ, and Christ is hid in God. 

So also the dreadful dream that any one can be forever 
exiled from God and buried in ever-enduring evil, passes away 
and ceases to sit as a nightmare on the bosom of religion. D- 
you think that God will come short of his own conception ? 

Do you think that he can for one moment endure the 
thought that any one man or woman should be left forever to 
the embrace of evil ? 

That men should contend with evil we can understand ! 
That they should wander far from'their Father's house and waste 
their immortal substance we can endure, for they are treated as 
free subjects who must develop by effort and through failure, 
but that all this should be done without an end — except a 
cruel end, that he should have descended to assume the nature 
of all men and made it divine in himself, only to cast away as 
refuse to be burned, the greater part of those made holy in 
himself, all this does so contradict and vilify his revelation that 
it is no wonder that the idea of everlasting damnation should 
have destroyed men's belief in the idea of the incarnation ; he 
who believes the one cannot rationally (though he may do it 
blindly,) believe the other. No, the incarnation rightly under- 
stood, necessitates the final righteousness and godlikenesss of 
all. How long the making righteous may endure none can 
tell. But through sphere after sphere of just retribution — 
through the change of the miserable circumstances of earth 
into happy circumstances — for I often think that what many 
a poor criminal wants to make lnm right is not punishment so 
much as comfort, — step by step, age after age, in world after 
world, perhaps, all the past dead are moving on, all the future 
dead will move on, a mighty stream to mingle in the ocean of 
the righteousness of God on that far-off but certain day when 
the idea of the incarnation will be fully realized, that hour to 
which the Apostle, in a lofty flight of inspiration, looked for- 
ward when he said : — "And when all things shall be subdued 
unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject to him 



260 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

that put all things under him that God may be all in all." It 
is sufficient to say now that its practical results are as impor- 
tant as they are many. It is the foundation of all efforts to 
civilize the barbarian peoples — it is the root and end of all noble 
legislation, of all just government, it is the inspiring impulse 
of the theory and practice of natural education, it is the main- 
spring of all charity, it is the foundation from which flows all 
redemptive measures for the outcast and criminal, it is the 
principle on which all relations between capital and labor 
should be based, it is the idea which overthrows all tyrannies, 
all oppression, all slavery, all class domination, it has been 
the war cry and watchword of all noble revelation. It will 
finally end in the destruction of all international trickery 
and in the establishment of a unity of mankind in which all 
shall be free, equal and fraternal, so that the unity of the 
human race, in some sort like the unity of God, will exist in 
the midst and because of our infinite manifoldness. — Christ 
in Modem Life, pp. 84-86. 



J[ + 8> dampML 



I deem they greatly err, who hold 
That he who made the human soul, 
Will not its destinies control 

For final good — but, wrathful, fold 

It in the shrouds of hopeless woe, 

Of deathless gloom, of quenchless fire, 
The creatures of his vengeful ire, 

Whence it can never ransom know. 



So, in the world to come, his love 
Shall freely unto all abound ; 
Even prisoners in the depths profound 

Shall see his kind face beam above 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 261 

Their dreary cells, and hear his voice, 

Unheeded once, in mercy call, — 

"Turn, turn to me and live !" and all 
Shall hear the summons and rejoice. 

Lost men, lost angels, shall return, — 

Satan himself be purified ; 

Death shall be conquered in his pride, 
And hell's fierce fires shall cease to burn. 
Then shall our God be all in all — 

His love bear universal sway ; 

His love preserves all souls for aye, 
Nor shall the weakest fear a fall. 



Be not impatient ! All will come to be, 

That yearns toward being in thy teeming breast, 

And in men's hearts. All yet will ripen, all ! 

And unexpectedly, prepared by heaven, 

As after a long Winter, it will lie 

Before thee, as upon thy table lies 

The flowering stalk, or full-grown ear of grain 

Which Nature with enormous energies 

Drew from the bosom of the universe. 



gaifijftn %tta&.— A. D. 1822. 

"He saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save !' 
So rang Tertullian's sentence, on the side 
Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried, — 
"Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave 



262 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Who sins, once washed by the baptismal wave !" 
So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed, 
The infant Church, of love she felt the tide 
Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave, 
And then she smiled, and in the Catacombs, 
With eye suffused but heart inspired true, 
On those walls subterranean, where she hid 
Her head in ignominy, death and tombs, 
She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew, 
And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid. 



Tivmm ftmwi Wttfc— A. D. 1822. 

One of the greatest of English women, in "Doomed 
to be Saved," says: 

I challenge those who forbid us to believe in the infinite 
mercy of God to say which of these three ways of viewing sin 
is most godlike, most probably nearest to the way in which God 
must view it. Will he feel pleasure in it ? Assuredly not. Will 
he feel mere anger and wrathful indignation ? I think it was 
very natural that the old Hebrews, who had just reached that 
stage themselves, should suppose he did so ; and I also think 
it is monstrous for a race who have for two thousand years 
taken Christ's blessed parable of the Prodigal Son as the very 
word of God to do anything of the kind. I think, if we were 
not caught in the meshes of that wretched Augustinian scheme 
of theology which makes the atonement necessary to appease 
God's wrath, and postulates eternal hell to compel ns to accept 
it, — I think, I say, if ^it were not for this theology, all Chris- 
tendom must have long ago come to see, that, at the very least, 
God feels towards a sinner as a father or a saint would do, and 
not as a man less good or wise or merciful, — the great Policeman 
of the universe. And remember, when we are presuming to 
speak of the awful character of God, it is not our business to 






A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 263 

inquire what it is just possible he may be or do without injust- 
ice or cruelty, but what is the very highest, the noblest, the 
kindest, the most royal and fatherlike thing we can possibly 
lift our minds to conceive. When we have found that, we may 
be assured it is the nearest we can yet approach to the truth. 
By and by, when we are loftier, nobler, and kinder, too, we 
shall get nearer to it still. Of all impossible things, the most 
impossible must surely be, that a man should dream something 
of the good and the noble, and that it should prove, at last, 
that his Creator was less good and less noble than he had 
dreamed. We theists, then, I conceive, are justified (even in 
this dim world of imperfect and uncertain vision), in holding 
clearly and boldly, as the very core of our faith, that God loves 
eternally and unalterably every creature he has made ; and that 
our sin, while it draws a thick veil over our eyes, and makes 
it impossible to give us the joy of communion with him, never 
blackens that Sun of love in the heavens, nor is it only by 
argument and analogy that we come to this conclusion. The 
Lord of conscience who bids us forgive till seventy times seven, 
the Lord of life, the Father of spirits, who reveals himself to 
us in the supreme hour of heartfelt prayer ; that God whose 
voice has so often called us back from our wanderings, and put 
it into our hearts to pray, and then has blessed and restored 
us again and yet again, — that God, we know, is never to be 
alienated. We do not think man's evil can, in the long-run of 
the infinite ages, outspeed finally God's ever-pursuing mercy. 
He must overtake us sooner or later. We may doom ourselves 
to groan beneath the burden of sin, and writhe beneath the 
scourge of just and most merciful retribution again and yet 
again, no one knows how long. We may choose evil rather 
than good, and vileness instead of nobleness, and be ungrate- 
ful and sinful almost as he is long-suffering and infinitely holy ; 
but it is almost, not quite. God will get the better of us at last. 



264: A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

JL f. !f. }>«g3Jtt%- A. D. 1823. 

Heimgang! So the German people 

Whisper when they hear the bell 
Tolling from some gray old steeple 

Death's familiar tale to tell; 
When they hear the organ dirges 

Swelling out from chapel dome, 
And the singers chanting surges, 

"Heimgang!" He is going home, 

Heimgang! Quaint and tender saying 

In the grand old German tongue 
That hath shaped Melanchthon's praying, 

And the hymns that Luther sung ; 
Blessed is our loving Maker, 

That where'er our feet shall roam, 
Still we journey toward "God's Acre" — 

''Heimgang!" Always going home! 



Heimgang! We are all so weary, 
And the willows, as they wave, 

Softly sighing, SAveetly, dreary, 
Woo us to the tranquil grave. 

When the golden pitcher's broken, 
With its dregs and with its foam, 

And the tender words are spoken, 
"Heimgang!" We are going home. 



1* % Jfetfmsm.—. A. D. 1823, 

The Past is dark with sin and shame, 
The Future dim with doubt and fear; 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 265 

But Father, yet we praise thy name, 
Whose guardian love is always near. 

'Tis dark around, 'tis dark above, 

But through the shadow streams the sun ; 

"We cannot doubt thy certain love, 
And man's great aim shall yet be won. 



l^rotas % Tfams.— A. D. 1823. 

Death is the fading of a cloud, 

The breaking of a chain ; 
The rending of a mortal shroud 

We ne'er shall see again. 

Death is the close of Life's alarms, — 
The watch-light on the shore, — 

The clasping in immortal arms 
Of loved ones gone before. 

Death is the gaining of a crown 
Where men and angels meet ; 

The laying of our burden down 
At the Deliverer's feet. 



George Bust, bishop of Dromore, an Episcopal 
Ecclesiastic in Ireland, in a work on Origen, says : 

To think they (the damned) are not beyond the power of 
redress and recovery, and that that great punishment they 
shall undergo, in this world, may contribute thereunto, and 



266 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES, 

yet to imagine they shall, for all this their disposition, be kept 
in it forever and ever, is to fix so harsh a note upon the mercy and 
equity of the righteous Judge of all the world, that the same 
temper in a man we should execrate and abominate. . . . 

Whithersoever we look, whether to the gracious Providence 
of God, or the necessity of the nature of things, we find some 
probable hope that the punishment of the damned, as it implies 
the sense of pain, shall not be eternal, in the highest sense of 
the word. ■ 



The Encyclopedia Americana speaks of an emi- 
nent German theologian who voices an instinct hon- 
orable and general to human nature. He says : 

I cannot see how a virtuous soul can be happy in heaven, 
while conscious that there is even one soul condemned to suf- 
fering in hell. 

It is, no doubt, this generous feeling that has 
caused the doctrine to be almost universally abhorred 
in cultivated and educated Germany. 



Of a volume of .sermons by this gentleman, recently 
published, the Spectator, London, said by Charles 
Sumner to be the ablest weekly journal in the English 
language, writes : 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 267 

One admirable sermon on "Eternal Punishment" is espe- 
cially to be commended to the notice of readers. Expounding 
the words "These shall go away into everlasting punishment," 
Mr. "Wallace insists that their meaning is, that the fire is eter- 
nal, the punishment eternal, but not the suffering of the indi- 
vidual human child. Where there is a moral government, pun- 
ishment must be eternal in possibility, if not in actuality. This 
interpretation of a passage, which to many is a difficult one, is 
very forcibly drawn out by the writer, and seems to us to be the 
true one. 



This "brightest and ablest of the Scotch prelates," 
according to Canon Farrar, — Bishop of Argyll and the 
Isles — says : 

Unless this be held as a matter of faith and not as a spec- 
ulative dogma, it is practically valueless. With me this final 
victory is not a matter of speculation at all, but of positive 
faith ; and to disbelieve it would be for me to cease altogether 
either to trust or to worship God. 

The Spectator, speaking of his biography by Alex- 
ander Koss, B. D., says : 

He fought for truth, not for dogmas ; he cared little for the- 
ological definitions, and much for everything that brought God 
nearer to the human soul and gave a fuller meaning to life. 
His own cry was for more light, and it was not the painful cry 
of doubt or of despair, but of a man who held with undoubting 
faith the fatherhood of God, and believed that all things were 
working together for good, not for a few elect souls, but for the 
whole world which Christ had died to redeem. Alexander 
Ewing acknowledged Erskine as his spiritual father, and there 



268 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

can be no doubt that he was also greatly influenced by the 
teaching of Maurice, McLeod Campbell, and Robertson, of 
Brighton. God as a father can never destroy one of the chil- 
dren whom he has created and redeemed ; all mankind are God's 
children, and therefore by some means all will be brought 
under the influence of divine love. This was his belief, and 
instead of making him apathetic, it stimulated his energy, so 
assured was he that the recollection that man is God's creature, 
however far he may have wandered from God's house, is on 
the lines of the highest theolgy. 



||r$ + JL j) + 1 + Hpn^— A - D - 1824 - 

Mrs. Whitney is one of the best American writers. 

Her productions are full of the broadest Christian 

faith. 

God does not send us strange flowers every year. 
When the Spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places, 
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces. 
The violet is here. 

It all comes back, the odor, grace and hue ; 
Each sweet relation of its life repeated, 
No blank is left, — no looking-for is cheated. 
It is the thing we knew. 

So after the death- Winter it must be, 
God will not put strange signs in the heavenly places ; 
The old love shall look out from the old faces. 
I shall have thee. 

Mrs. Whitney's "Maiden of Four Years Old," dis- 
gusted with a caterpillar, said to her mother, "while 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 269 

about it, I wish they had finished the butterfly." The 
poet moralizes : 

They were words to the thought of the soul that turns 
From the coarser forms of a partial growth, 

Eeproaching the infinite patience that yearns 
With an unknown glory to crown them both. 

Ah, look then, largely, with lenient eyes, 
On whatso beside thee may creep and cling, 

For the possible glory that underlies 

The passing phase of the meanest thing. 

What if God's great angels, whose waiting love 

Beholdeth our pitiful life below, 
From the holy height of their heaven above, 

Couldn't bear with the worm till the wings should grow? 



£♦ luring Otatfo 

The key to the transformation is the growing belief that 
the relation of God to the world is less fairly set forth by the 
relation of a king to his subjects, than by that of a father to 
his household, in which in the worst case, he has to do, not 
with enemies, but with prodigals, the objects of his profound, 
compassion, and in spite of their recklessness, as the parable 
teaches us, of his yearning love. The key to the theology which 
has ruled in the church thus far, has been the monarchic prin- 
ciple of government, with which especially in its most absolute, 
despotic forms, man has been through all too sadly familiar. 
The key to the theology which is winning its way, and which 
will rule in the church of the future, is the Father's authority 
in and government of a household — that household of God 
being not an elect company, but the wide human world. The 
problem of the future is the reconciliation of all the dark and 



270 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

difficult passages of the Divine government as we gather our 
knowledge of it from Scripture on the one hand, and from the 
lust of this sad world on the other, with the fatherly heart and 
fatherly reign of God. 



Jam} Jmram*— A. D. 1824. 

This woman of genius has given utterance to the 
great hope of man's ultimate deliverance. In "Weav- 
ing" she sings : 

So at the loom of life we weave 

Our separate shreds, that varying fall, 

Some stained, some fair ; and passing, leave 
To God the gathering up of all, 

In that full pattern, wherein man 

Works blindly out the eternal plan. 

The cheerful optimism that distinguishes most of 
the great modern poets, pervades her sweet and health- 
ful lines. 



IJpmms §riJfi% 

The celebrated Prebendary of St. Paul's, in his 
"Fundamentals or Bases of Belief," (London, 1871,) 
observes : 

We do get good out of evil. Our gracious Educator does 
evolve for us out of corruption, temptation and sin, new pur- 
poses, new skill, new triumphs. If evil is present only as a 






A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 271 

thing to be removed, permitted only to be cast ont, then what 
is called the development of humanity assumes the freer, nobler 
form of deliverance, redemption, restoration. Beyond this 
overruling of intermediate evil into subserviency to a higher 
good, we are entitled to assume ourselves that what has been 
superinduced as a transition state of things is therefore neces- 
sarily only for a time. It will pass away with the functions 
which it is made to fulfill. It will at last be superseded by the 
highest good for the world, and for God's offspring, man. This 
has ever been the dream and hope of every lover of truth and 
beauty and goodnesss. It has formed the theme of poets and 
sages and righteous men in every age. 



(feojga $»ttomafiu— A. D. 1824. 

One of the most unique of modern writers is this 
celebrated novelist and preacher. He says : 

Nothing is inexorable but love. For Love loves unto pur- 
ity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which 
it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, 
all that comes between and is not of love's kind must be 
destroyed. And "our God is a consuming fire. " It is the nature 
of God so terribly pure that it destroys all that is not pure as 
fire. He will have purity. It is not that the fire will burn us 
if we do not worship God, but that the fire will burn us until 
we worship thus, yea, that will go on within us after all that is 
foreign to us has yielded to its force, no longer with pain and 
consuming, but as the highest consciousness of lif e, the pres- 
ence of God. In the outer darkness, where the worst sinners 
dwell, God hath withdrawn himself but not lost his hold. His 
face is turned away, but his hand is laid upon him still. His 
heart has ceased to beat into the man's heart, but he keeps 
him alive by his fire. And that fire will go searching and burn- 



272 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

ing on in him, as in the highest saint who is not yet pure as he 
is pure. Bnt at length, O God, wilt thou not cast death and 
hell into the lake of fire even into thine own consuming self ? 
Death shall then die everlastingly, 

And hell itself will pass away, 

And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. 

Then indeed wilt thou be all in all. For then our poor brothers 
and sisters, every one, — O God, we trust in thee, the consum- 
ing fire, shall have been burnt clean and brought home. For 
if their moans, myriads of ages away, would turn heaven for us 
into hell, shall a man be more merciful than God ? Shall, of 
all his glories, his mercy alone not be infinite? Shall a brother 
love a brother more than the father loves a son ? more than the 
brother Christ loves his brother? Would he not die yet again 
to save one brother more ? 

Of the lowest of women he makes Falconer say : 

They are in God's hands. He hasn't done with them yet. 
Shall it take less time to make a woman than to make a world ? 
Is not the woman the greater? She may have her ages of 
chaos, her centuries of crawling slime, yet rise a woman at last. 
It always comes back upon me, as if I had never known it 
before, that women like some of those were of the first to under- 
stand our Lord. * * * 



Upon the text "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself, " he says that 

St. Paul would be wretched before the throne of God, if 
he thought there was one man beyond the pale of his mercy, 
and that as much for God's glory as for man's sake, and what 
shall we say of the man Christ Jesus ? "Who, that loves his 
brother, would not, upheld by the love of Christ, and with a 
dim hope that in the far off time there might be some help for 
him, arise from the company of the blessed, and rush down 
into the dismal regions of despair, to sit with the lost, the only 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 273 

■unredeemed, the Judas of his race, and be himself more blessed 
in the pains of hell, than in the glories of heaven ! Who, in 
the midst of the golden harps and the white wings, knowing that 
one of his kind, one miserable brother in the old-world time 
when men were taught to love their neighbor as themselves, 
was howling unheeded far below in the vaults of the creation, 
who, I say, would not feel that he must arise, that he had no 
choice, that, awful as it was, he must gird his loins, and go down 
into the smoke and the darkness and the fire, traveling the 
weary and fearful road into the far country to find his brother ? 
— Unspoken Sermons. 



The following is commended to the consideration 
of those who are troubled at the thought of dying 
unprepared for the immortal life : 

"What a thing it must be, Mr. Sutherland, for a man to 
break out of the choke-damp of typhus-fever into the clear air 
of the life beyond !" 

"Yes," said Hugh; adding, after a slight hesitation, "if he 
be at all prepared for the change. " 

"Where a change belongs to the natural order of things," 
said Falconer, "and arrives inevitably at some time, there must 
always be more or less preparedness for it. Besides, I think 
a man is generally prepared for a breath of fresh air." 

"We are, perhaps, too much in the habit of thinking of 
death as the culmination of disease, which, regarded only in 
itself, is an evil and a terrible evil. But I think rather of death 
as the first pulse of the new strength, shaking itself free from 
the old mouldy remnants of earth garments, that it may begin 
in freedom the new life that grows out of the old. The cater- 
pillar dies into the butterfly. Who knows but disease may be 
the coming, the keener life, breaking into this, and beginning 
to destroy, like fire, the inferior modes or garments of the pres- 
ent ? And then disease would be but the sign of the salvation, 
of fire ; of the agony of the greater life to lift us to itself, oufe 
18 



274: A CLOUD OP WITNESSES. 

of that wherein we are failing and sinning. And so we praise 
the consuming fire of life. (p. 354.) 



My child is lying on my knees ; 

The signs of heaven she reads; 
My face is all the heaven she sees, 

Is all the heaven she needs. 



I also am a child, and I 

Am ignorant and weak ; 
I gaze upon the starry sky, 

And then I must not speak. 

For all behind the starry sky, 
Behind the world so broad, 

Behind men and men's souls doth lie 
The Infinite of God. 

Lo ! Lord, I sit in thy wide space, 

My child upon my knee ; 
She looketh up into my face, 

And I look up to thee ! 



-A. D. 1825-1864. 

The poems of this sweet singer, daughter of 
Barry Cornwall, are frequent with the beauty of the 
universal hope. In "Our Dead" she sings : 

Nothing is our own, we hold our pleasures 

Just a little while ere they are fled; 
One by one life robs us of our treasures, 

Nothing is our own except our dead. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 275 

Justice pales ; truth fades ; stars fall from heaven ; 

Human are the great whom we revere ; 
No true crown of honor can be given, 

Till we place it on a funeral bier. 

Death more tender-hearted, leaves to sorrow 

Still the radiant shadow, fond regret ; 
We shall find, in some far, bright to-morrow, 

Joy that he has taken, living yet. 

The "Triumph of Time" thus closes: 

More bitter far than all 
It was to know that love could change and die ! 

Hush for the ages call, 
"The love of God lives through eternity, 

And conquers all ! " 



Still our place is kept, and it will wait, 

Eeady for us to fill it, soon or late, 

No star is ever lost we once have seen, 

We always may be what we might have been, 

Since Good, though only thought, has life and breath, 

God's lif e can always be redeemed from death, 

And evil in its nature is decay, 

And any hour can blot it all away. 



If, in my heart, I now could fear 

That, risen again, we should not know 

What was our Life of Life when here, — 
The hearts we loved so much below, — 

I would arise this very day 

And cast so poor a thing away. 

But Love is no such soulless clod — 
Living, perfected it shall rise 



276 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Transfigured in the light of God, 

And giving glory to the skies, 
And that which makes this life so sweet, 
Shall render heaven's joy complete. 



Jmptrit liHjJmj— A. D. 1825-1878. 

Bayard Taylor, in his last great work, "Prince 
Deukalion," sings: 

For Life, whose source not here began, 

Must fill the utmost sphere of man ; 

And, so expanding, lifted be 

Along the line of God's decree, 

To find in endless growth all good — 

In endless toil, beatitude. 

Seek not to know him, yet aspire 

As atoms forward to the central fire ! 

Not lord of race is he, afar, — 

Of men, or earth, or any star, 

But of the inconceivable All; 

Whence nothing that there is can fall 

Beyond him — but may nearer rise, 

Slow-circling through eternal skies. 



9tm$ gt&4 ©raft.— A. D. 1826. 

The author of "John Halifax" and other popular 
novels, breathes the spirit of our faith throughout her 
beautiful stories. We give a passage from ''Mistress 
and Maid." After Ascott Leaf has committed his 
crime, the author says : 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 277 

Whose fault is it ? Aye, whose ? The eternal, unsolvable 
problem rose up before Hilary's imagination. The ghastly 
spectre of that everlasting doubt, which haunts even the firm- 
est faith sometimes, and which all the nonsense written about 
that mystery which 

Binding nature fast in fate, 
Leaves free the human will, 

only makes darker than before — oppressed her for the time 
being with an inexpressible dread 

Aye, why was it that the boy was what he was ? 

From his inherited nature, his temperament, or his cir- 
cumstances ? What, or, more awful question still, who was to 
blame ? But as Hilary's thoughts went deeper down the ques- 
tion answered itself — at least as far as it ever can be answered 
in this narrow, finite stage of being. Whose will — we dare not 
say whose blame — is it that evil must inevitably generate evil ? 
that the smallest wrong-doing in any human being rouses a 
chain of results which may fatally involve other human beings 
in an almost incalculable circle of misery. The wages of sin is 
death. Were it not so, sin would cease to be sin, and holiness, 
holiness. If he, the all-holy, who for some inscrutable purpose 
saw fit to allow the existence of evil, allowed any other law than 
this, in either the spiritual or material world, would he not be 
denying himself, counteracting the necessities <5f his own right- 
eous essence, to which evil is so antagonistic that we cannot 
doubt it must be in the end cast into total annihilation— into 
the allegorical lake of fire and brimstone, which is the "second 
death" ? 

Nay, do they not in reality deny him and his holiness 
almost as much as atheists do, who preach that the one great 
salvation which he has sent into the world is a salvation from 
punishment — a keeping out of hell and getting into heaven — 
instead of a salvation from sin, from the power and love of sin, 
through the love of God in Christ ? 



278 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

In "John Halifax" she says : 

What are we that we should place limits to the infinite 
mercy of the Lord and Giver of life, unto whom all life returns ? 

There is no such word as "too late" in the wide world — 
nay, not in the universe. What ! shall we, whose atom of time 
is but a fragment out of an ever-present eternity — shall we, so 
long as we live, or even at our life's ending, dare to cry out to 
the Eternal One, "It is too late !" 

These lines express her faith : 

Take thou then 
Our bitterness of loss, aspirings vain, 
And anguishes of unfulfilled desire, 
Our joys imperfect, our sublimed despairs, 
Our hopes, our dreams, our wills, our loves, our all, 
And cast them into the great crucible 
In which the whole earth, slowly purified, 
Buns molten, and shall run, the will of God. 

In '-'Woman's Kingdom" : 

Lost — how sad a word it is — how sad and yet how com- 
mon ! And who are the lost ? Not the dead — God keeps them, 
safe and sure ; though how and where we know not, until we 
go the way they all have gone. But the living lost — the sin- 
ners who have been over-tempted and have fallen — the sinned 
against, who have been hunted and tortured into crime — the 
weak ones, half good, half bad, with whom it seems the chance 
of a straw whether they shall take the right way or the wrong 
— who shall find them ? He will one day, we trust ; he who in 
his whole universe loses, finally, nothing. 

From the "Lost Silver:" 

Holy Lord Jesus, thou wilt search till thou find 
This lost piece of silver, — this treasure enshrined 
In casket or bosom, once of such store, 
Now lying under the dust of thy floor. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 279 

Loving Lord Jesus, thou wilt come thro' the dark, 
When men are all sleeping and no eye can mark, 
Thou "clean forgotten like a dead man out of mind," 
This lost piece of silver thou wilt search for and find. 



JHtsaWjf yitmM <%rte* 

The author of the "Schonberg Cotta Family," in 
the Sunday Magazine, describes the deathless and tri- 
umphant love of Christ . 

Great Shepherd of the sheep ! 

The sheep are thine, not mine ! 
Thou thy great flock wilt surely keep, 

And each one lamb of thine, 

Ever, the wide waste o'er, 

A lamb upon thy breast ! 
Thy lost thou seekest evermore, 

I seek, with thee, and rest. 



This distinguished author writes : 

I mean simply to indicate the spiritual significance 01 the 
Christ. I mean to say that the birth, life, death, and glorifi- 
cation of Christ, spiritually imply that infinite love and wisdom 
constitute the inmost and inseparable life of man, and will 
ultimately vindicate their creative presence and power by bring- 
ing the most degraded and contemned forms of humanity into 
rapturous, conscious conjunction with thee. 



280 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 



Whilst far and wide thy scattered sheep, 
Great Shepherd, in the desert stray, 

Thy love, by some, is thought to sleep, 
Unmindful of the wanderer's way. 

But truth declares they shall be found, 
Wherever now they darkling roam ; 

Thy voice shall through the desert sound, 
And summon every wanderer home. 

Upon the darkened paths of sin, 
Instead of terror's sword of flame, 

Shall love descend, for love can win 
Far more than terror can reclaim. 

And they shall turn their wand'ring feet, 
By grace redeemed, by love controlled. 

Till all at last in Eden meet, 
One happy, universal fold ! 



There's good in everything we view, 
The truth we none can hide, 

In every heart there's goodness, too, 
We've all our angel side. 

Though from our senses it is hid, 

'Twill show itself when it is bid, 
For still 'tis true 

We've all our angel side. 

There never yet was found a heart, 
Where goodness all had died, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 281 

5 Twas hidden in some unseen part, 

We've all our angel side, 
Thy fallen brother hath a soul, 
God's mercy yet will make him whole, 

For still 'tis true 
We've all our angel side. 



The author of "Echoes of Spoken Words "observes : 

When Christ says, Better life with self -mortification than 
self-indulgence with Gehenna, Gehenna on his tongue must 
needs stand for corruption, since corruption is the antithesis 
of life, and the literal Gehenna, as we have seen, was emphat- 
ically the place of corruption. For what were the fires of 
Gehenna lighted ? To inflict pain and anguish ? No ; but to 
get rid of the city's impurity. All its various filth was there, 
and for what purpose ? That by the action of fire it might be 
licked up and purged away. The flame of the valley of Hinnom 
cannot be made to represent the awful suffering in store for 
sin ; it can only fitly represent the certain consumption of sin, 
to be effected through the sharpness of fire. 



"I pray thee, Father, send him to my father's house, for I 
have five brethren, that he may testify to them that they come 
not to this place of torment." Why, what a transformation 
was here ! Who could have anticipated that the selfish sensu- 
alist described in the 9th and 10th verses of the chapter would 
be seen ere long pouring himself out ,in concern for others ; 
seized and possessed amid his anguish with anxiety for the 
good of others — moved by the pains he was enduring not to 
rave or complain, not to curse or growl, but to make efforts to 
save others. Better, by far, already, you will notice, than those 



282 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

redeemed saints of whom we have heard, whose happiness is to 
be intensified by witnessing and watching the torments of the 
damned ; he is burdened in his damnation with yearnings for 
the deliverance of such as appear to him in danger of becom- 
ing damned. 

But surely, my friends, if according to Jesus Christ a man 
in hell may come to be inspired with the missionary spirit, and 
to pray and intercede that his brethren on earth may not be 
lost, — surely souls in heaven will long to be able to rescue the 
lost, and will be constrained to attempt it. Can there possibly 
be less bowels of compassion there ? And, then, what of God 
himself, the all-merciful, and his infinite love? — Echoes of 
Spoken Words, London, Sampson Low, 1877. 



Eev. C. Short is minister of Ward Chapel, Inde- 
pendent, Dundee, Scotland, the largest independent 
congregation in Dundee. 

But still you say that suffering and remorse are not redemp- 
tion, even though prolonged through centuries of suffering. 
Granted. But may they not be the preparation for redemption, 
just as the operation of the divine law is a preparation for the 
exercise of divine grace ? If men in this lif e were too busy and too 
pre-occupied to think of God and their duty, would they refuse 
to listen to him when worn out yonder with self-torture and 
the wrath of God? If they rejected Christ here because they 
were too full of sinful desire to see any beauty in him would 
they refuse there his call to rest and forgiveness, when heavy 
laden with the burden of their remembered sins? And if Jesus 
Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, would not he 
who went and preached to the spirits in prison, who had sinned 
in the days of Noah, go still and preach to other spirits in 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 283 

prison now, breaking in npon their despair and darkness with 
the glad tidings of God to the lost ? Did he not say that he 
had come to seek and to save them that were lost, and that the 
Good Shepherd goes after the lost sheep until he find it? And 
are we at liberty to suppose that he will abandon his search 
after the lost ones when they have strayed beyond the bounds 
of this world ; that his love is local and temporal, confined to 
sinners in this lif e only ? Or that his love for men turns into 
anger after they die, and will remain anger to all eternity ? I 
know no blasphemy against the divine goodness so great as 
that. 

But it will be asked, Is not this a dangerous doctrine to 
preach ? Is it not dangerous to hold that God will be satisfied 
with less than a whole eternity of suffering for the sins con- 
mitted in this life? Do you know what you are saying? Have 
you any idea what a whole eternity of suffering means? Can 
you conceive of suffering for a thousand or ten thousand years ? 
Can you realize the thought of a creature enduring agony of 
mind or body for ten hundred thousand years, a million years ? 
If you can, you are only on the threshold of that creature's 
sufferings ; for what are a hundred millions of years to an eter- 
nity? And then try to think of the unnumbered millions of 
human beings that have gone into eternity and are still going, 
out of all lands, who have either never heard of Christ or have 
lived unrighteous lives and have died impenitent, and who, 
according to your theory, must have gone to suffer for ever 
and ever the consequences of their sins here. Upon your the- 
ory hell must be by hundreds of millions a larger and more 
populous place than heaven. And that great universe of mis- 
erable, suffering souls must continue miserable and suffering 
through all eternity, the smoke of their torment ascending up 
to blacken the heaven of light for ever and ever. And you 
think it safe to preach such a doctrine as that ? I should say 
it was the most dangerous doctrine that was ever conceived, 
the most dreadful ever uttered by human lips ; for it has already 
done and is doing his religion infinite harm. No wonder, if 
Christ is made responsible for this doctrine, that men should 



284 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

turn away from his Gospel, and try to throw all manner of 
doubt and discredit upon it. And this is what thousands in 
this country at this day are doing — drifting farther and farther 
away from Christ, because some of his followers say that he 
taught that future punishment was to last forever. But, accord- 
ing to my view, it is the very spirit and teaching of Christ 
imbuing the modern mind, which are causing a wide revolt 
against this cruel creed. It is because men are receiving the 
truth that God is the Father of the human race, that Christ is 
the Good Shepherd— that they find it impossible to believe 
that hell will burn forever. The spirit of Christ is in men 
without their knowing it, without their tracing its source, 
humanizing their beliefs, lifting up their theology and com- 
pelling them to think "that God is good, and that his tender 
mercies are over all his works." The teaching and character 
of Christ operating silently and imperceptibly on the modern 
mind have taught us to hold "that love is the ground of all 
creation. The word 'God is love' has of late so filled our 
minds and hearts and souls, we are so divinely haunted by it, 
so possessed by it, it so rules us from the surface to the center 
of our being, that we are sure that Love is the Alpha and 
Omega, the. beginning and the end of all." — Duration of 
Future Punishment, and Other Sermons. 



John Brown, of Edinburgh, author of "Spare 
Hours, " son of John Brown, D. D., the eminent Pres- 
byterian minister, was not a Universalist, it is pre- 
sumed, but he has recorded the following : 

A poor woman of great worth and excellent understand- 
ing, in whose conversation my father took much pleasure, was 
on her death-bed. Wishing to try her faith he said to her, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 285 

"Janet, what would you say if after all he has done for you, God 
should let you drop into hell?" "E'en as he likes; he'll lose 
more than I do. " 



tjj Jiptiatoii* 



The Spectator, a liberal, broad church organ of 
English opinion, London, says : 

It is a remarkable fact that the discussion which has more 
than once been raised in our columns as to the Christian doc- 
trine of retribution and its continuance, has now been revived 
by Canon Farrar's striking sermons in the pages of the Guar- 
dian, and that not a few clergymen maintain in that journal 
that the doctrine of the endlessness of moral evil, and of the 
pain which is involved in evil, is nowhere taught in the New 
Testament, while there is much teaching of St. Paul's which 
distinctly points in the opposite direction. It is evident, more- 
over, that this view is taken, not by the lax and latitudinarian 
party in our church, so much as by the earnest and enthusias- 
tic party who lay the most stress on the conquest over indiffer- 
ence and frigidity of soul. Mr. Brooke Lambert, for instance, 
in this week's Guardian insists that if salvation comes through 
"hope," as the apostle says, the more you teach men to hope 
for their moral regeneration, and the more you represent God 
as intending and providing for it, the more chance you have of 
practical success. Certainly, very little success has come of the 
assumption that we are saved by fear. 

This journal says in another place : 

The best tendencies of our time are enlisted in the search 
for and salvation of the lost. They will all recoil from a creed 
which puts a limit to this aim in a Being whose power to pur- 
sue it is unlimited. 



286 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

In her novel, "On Dangerous Ground, or Agatha's 
Friendship, "a romance of American society, (H. Moore, 
1876,) expresses these thoughts: 

"I cannot see God's will in any rash acts of our own ; if I 
could, I would soon learn a lesson of submission. A man's life 
seems to me to be made up of a series of perpetual blunders, 
and just as he arrives at an age to profit by his experiences 
and become wiser, Ms mental and bodily powers fail him, or 
else the end comes, and he dies like the worm that he is." 

"Do not say that ! There is no end; we are immortal." 

"I do not dispute that. I wish that I could, if there is to 
be for any of God's creatures an immortality of suffering." 

"But you do not believe any such dogma, you cannot be so 
unjust to our Creator, you must know that although we are 
punished for our sins, punishment is of a reformatory and not 
of a vindictive character. If it were eternal, what end could 
be gained?" 

"I was not touching upon that question, too monstrous to 
entertain — that of everlasting punishment. I could not conceive 
a God so merciless, so wanting in all the attributes of a father; 
but believing as I do that when the end comes to us here it is 
but the beginning of an advanced stage of our being, a stage 
of progress," etc. 



JHtza jSnittttei;* 

Thou Grace Divine, encircling all, 
A soundless, shoreless sea ! 

Wherein at last our souls must fall, 
O Love of God most free ! 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 287 

When over dizzy heights we go, 

One soft hand blinds our eyes, 
The other leads us, safe and slow, 

O Love of God most wise ! 

And though we turn us from thy face, 

And wander wide and long, 
Thou holdst us still in thine embrace, 

O Love of God most strong ! 



(partes §* $me*+— A. D. 1862. 

He is eyes for all who is eyes for the mole, 
All motion goes to the rightful goal, — 
O God ! I can trust for the human soul. 



In his "Scientific Basis of Faith" Murphy inclines 
to the idea of the annihilation of the sinner, but is 
free to make some observations which indicate the 
"larger hope." He remarks : 

Painful as the process must be whereby sin is to be 
destroyed, we have yet the blessing of knowing that it is destruc- 
tive and consequently will come to an end with that which it 
is to destroy. The worm will never die until it has eaten all 
that there is for it to eat ; the fire will never be quenched, but 
it will cease to burn when there is nothing left for it to con- 
sume. Either the sin and the sinner shall be destroyed together, 
or the sin shall be destroyed so that the sinner shall arise out 



288 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

of the fire, purified. In no case are we to think of any crea- 
ture of God without hope. There are, however, sayings of 
Christ and Paul which appear to point to the ultimate salva- 
tion of all, without the destruction of any (John xii : 32 ; Konu 
xi:32). 



In his "The Mystery of Pain," remarks : 

Accustomed as we have been to be in darkness, and to 
bear sorrow unassuaged (debarred by loss and lapse from 
our privilege as Christian men), have we not almost forgotten 
that the Spirit is the Comforter ; that the Gospel claims, as 
one of its chief ends, that we might have great consolation ; 
that God has undertaken himself to wipe away all tears from 
his children's eyes ; and that Christ, foretelling tribulation, ha& 
bidden us to be of good cheer? 



f|r$ + % 1+ I* ©taurfmuX 

The author of "No Sects in Heaven," teaches, in 
that popular satire, that all those little resorts and 
expedients on which so many rely to secure heaven, 
will be in vain. The Churchman, the Quaker, Dr. Watts. 
with his psalms, Wesley, old school and new school, 
and Baptist, all struggled across the river, each imag- 
ining his the only way to heaven. But the author, after 
describing their useless struggles, says : 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

I watched them long in my curious dream, 

Till they stood by the border of the stream, 

Then, just as I thought ! The two ways met, 

But all the brethren were talking yet, 

And would talk on, till the heaving tide, 

Carried them over, side by side ; 

Side by side, for the way was one, 

The toilsome journey of life was done, 

And priest, and quaker, and all who died, 

Came out alike on the other side. 

No forms or crosses or books had they, 

No gowns of silk or suits of gray, 

No creeds to guide them, or MSS., 

For all had put on "Christ's righteousness." 



dsrafo Uasssg — A. D. 1828. 

I cannot believe in endless hell 
And heaven side by side. How could I dwell 
Among the saved, for thinking of the lost ? 
With such a lot the best would suffer most. 

Sitting at feast all in a Golden Home, 
That towered over dungeon-gates of Doom, 
My heart would ache for all the lost that go 
To wail and weep in everlasting woe ; 
Through all the music I must hear the moan, 
Too sharp for all the harps of heaven to drown. 



Heaven will not shut for evermore, 
"Without a knocker left upon the door, 
Lest some belated wanderer should come 
.Heart-broken, asking just to die at home ; 
So that the Father will at last forgive, 
19 



290 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

And, looking on his face, that soul shall live. 

There will be watchmen through the night, 

Lest any far-off turn them to the light; 

For he who loved us into lif e must be 

A Father, infinitely fatherly, 

And groping for him there, shall find their way 

From outer dark, through twilight into day. 



That all divergent lines at last will meet, 

To make the clasping round of Love complete. 

The rift 'twixt Sense and Spirit will be healed, 

Ere the Redeemer's work be crowned and sealed. 

Evil shall die like dang about the root 

Of good, or climb converted into fruit. 



Love must be 
The missionary of Eternity ! 
Must still find work in worlds beyond the grave, 
So long as there's a single soul to save — 
Must from the highest heaven yearn to tell 
God's message — be the Christ to some dark hell. 



l^&ttonj 1i[m%0{r>— A. D. 1828-1861. 

This brilliant but early called writer says in 
"John Brent" : 

A clergyman who starts with believing in hells, devils, 
original sin, and such crudities, can never be anything in the 
nineteenth century but a tyrant or a nuisance, if he have any 
logic, as, fortunately, few of such misbelievers have. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 291 

^rmttej Jbm%— A D. 1830-1867. 

This poet says : 

God is a worker. He has thickly strewn 
Infinity with grandeur. God is love. 
He yet shall wipe away creation's tears, 
And all the worlds shall summer in his smile. 



The author of "Complete Triumph of Moral Good 
Over Evil," (London, 1870,) thus discourses : 

We are allowed to cherish the consolatory idea that all the 
kindly bonds of friendship and affection formed on earth will 
be finally and eternally renewed, although an incalculable dur- 
ation of gloomy darkness and misery may separate the sons of 
light from many who were dearly loved. We are cheered by 
the prospect, that, although the dispensation of sorrow must 
endure so long as moral evil exists, and must penetrate into 
the most elevated regions of holiness and love, yet, that a time 
will come, when " God shall wipe away all tears from the eyes 
of men," and "there shall be no more death; neither sorrow, 
nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain;" when the 
whole creation shall exult in the conviction that "the former 
things are passed away." They (the redeemed) will be per- 
mitted to co-operate in the great measures for the extinction 
of evil ; and their perception of its intensity and virulence will 
constantly acquire additional force, as new proofs are afforded 
that it can only be vanquished by divine energy. They may 
even, as the angels, find again and again that their utmost 
efforts are unavailing to soften malignity and to dissipate dark- 
ness. But their disappointments will not be embittered by 



292 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

despondency, nor be followed by the languor of inertion. Such 
disappointments will be the means of salutary discipline, 
expanding the noble thoughts and feelings of which they 
acquired the rudiments on earth, and tending to elevatethem 
to ever-growing conformity with the divine characteristics of 
patient, untiring benevolence. Although celestial sorrow must 
endure so long as any part of the creation groans and travails 
in pain, it will be so softened and mitigated by firm confidence 
in a God, and the cheering prospect of universal happiness, 
that it will have none of the bitterness which is associated with 
sorrow in our present experience. It will also be counterbal- 
anced by a succession of stirring events, which will agitate the 
realms of light. The principle of self-sacrifice will develop 
heroism, of an order which we can but dimly conceive from 
earthly analogies and Scriptural intimations. Daring inroads 
will be made into the kingdom of darkness, and conquests will 
be effected by the display of that glorious banner, which is the 
symbol of divine love. That wondrous love, so touchingly 
manifested, and operating with such patient, unwearied per- 
sistence, will gradually penetrate the deepest recesses of malig- 
nity and corruption, and will vanquish the enmity of the most 
obdurate and rebellious, "until all things shall be subdued 
unto God, by Christ, that God may be all in all." 



JIUti Jtmtffam,— A. D. 1829. 

This world is bright and fair, we know; 

The skies are arched in glory ; 
The stars shine on, the sweet flowers blow 

And tell their blessed story. 

But softer than the Summer's breath, 

And fairer than its roses, 
"Will be the clime afar, when Death 

The pearly gate uncloses ; 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

The land where broken ties shall twine, 

And fond hearts will not sever, 
Where Love's pure light shall brighter shine, 

Forever and forever ! 



f am fttgrfnttt*— A. D. 1830. 

He waits for us, while, houseless things, 
"We beat about with bruised wings 
On the dark floods and water springs, 

The ruined world, the desolate sea ; 
"With open windows from the prime, 
All night, all day, he waits sublime, 
Until the fulness of the time 

Decreed from his eternity. 



The author of the "Light of Asia" thus sings 

He who died at Azan sends 
This to comfort all his friends. 



Faithful friends ! It lies, I know, 
Pale and white and cold as snow; 
And ye say, "Abdallah's dead!" 
"Weeping at the feet and head. 
I can see your falling tears, 
I can hear your sighs and prayers ; 
Yet I smile, and whisper this — 
"I am not the thing you kiss ; 



294 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Cease your tears and let it He ; 
It was mine, it is not 'I.' " 

Sweet friends ! what the women lave 

For its last bed of the grave 

Is a hut which I am quitting, 

Is a garment no more fitting, 

Is a cage, from which at last, 

Like a hawk, my soul hath passed ; 

Love the inmate, not the room ; 

The wearer, not the garb ; the plume 

Of the falcon, not the bars 

"Which kept him from the splendid stars ! 

Loving friends ! be wise, and dry 
Straightway every weeping eye 
"What ye lift upon the bier 
Is not worth a wistful tear. 
9 Tis an empty sea-shell — one 
Out of which the pearl has gone ; 
The shell is broken — it lies there; 
The pearl, the alL the soul, is here. 
'Tis an earthen jar whose lid 
Allah sealed, the while it hid 
That treasure of his treasury, 
A mind that loved him ; let it lie 
Let the shard be earth's once more, 
Since the gold shines in his store ! 

Allah glorious ! Allah good ! 
Now thy world is understood ; 
Now the long, long wonder ends ! 
Yet ye weep, my erring friends, 
While the man whom ye call dead, 
In unspoken bliss, instead, 
Lives and loves you ; lost, 'tis true, 
By such light as shines for you ; 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 295 

But in light ye cannot see 
Of unfilled felicity— 
In enlarging paradise — 
Lives a life that never dies. 

Farewell, friends ! Yet not farewell; 
"Where I am ye too shall dwell. 
I am gone before your face 
A moment's time, a little space ; 
"When ye come where I have stepped 
Ye will wonder why ye wept ; 
Ye will know, by wise love taught, 
That here is all, and there is naught. 
"Weep awhile, if ye are fain — 
Sunshine still must follow rain — 
Only not at death ; for death, 
Now I know, is that first breath 
Which our souls draw when we enter 
Life, which is of all lif e center. 

Be ye certain all seems love 

Viewed from Allah's throne above; 

Be ye stout of heart, and come 

Bravely onward to your home ! 

La Allah ilia Allah! yea ! 

Thou Love divine ! Thou Love alway ! 

He that died at Azan gave 

This to those who made his grave. 



§nntm % % l»rnnj*— A. D. 1831. 

Thou, O Father, wilt not be angry with thy child because 
he thought — and tried to bid others to think just and noble 
things of thee ; thou, O Savior, wilt not frown at him because 



296 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

lie trusted in the infinitude of thy compassion; and thou, O 
Holy Spirit, whose image is the soft stealing of the dew and 
the golden hovering of the dove, wilt know that if he erred it 
was because he fixed his eyes, not on the glaring and baleful 
meteors of anathematizing orthodoxy, but on the star of Beth- 
lehem and the clouds that began to shine above the coming of 
the Lord ; and that — if perchance he erred — the light which led 
astray was light from heaven. * * * But if there be one thing 
which he must loathe whose name is Love, it is the hallelujahs 
of exultant anathema, and the thinly disguised hate which rages 
and protests with so fierce an ignorance against a trust in 
Mercy founded only on these two great doctrines (which they 
say they own) — the doctrine of Christ's infinite redemption; 
the doctrine of God's boundless love. 



I am alluding, not to humble and holy Christians who hold 
such opinion, but to men like the preacher, described by Dr. 
Guthrie, who declared that he had a bad opinion of the condi- 
tion of those who did not rejoice that God's enemies were 
destroyed without remedy. I thought I saw the man stamp- 
ing with his foot, and putting out the smoking flax. It was a 
horrible caricature of the Gospel. 



Shall nature fill the hollows of her coarse rough flints with 
purple amethyst ; shall she out of the grimy coal, over which 
the shivering beggar warms himself, form the diamond that 
trembles on the forehead of a queen ; shall even man take the 
cast-off slag and worthless rubble of the furnace and educe 
from it Ms most glowing and lustrous dyes — and shall not God 
be able to make anything of his ruined souls? * * * "We 
made them not; they .are not people of our pasture, or sheep 
of our hands ; yet if we can feel for sinners a yearning love, a 
trembling pity, and if that love and pity spring from all that 
is holiest and most Christlike in our souls, — and if it would be 
wholly impossible for any wretch among us to be so remorse- 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 297 

less as to doom his deadliest enemy to an endless vengeance — 
are we to believe this of God?— to believe that he who planted 
mercy in us is merciless, and that he will "hold us up with one 
hand and torment us with the other," who knoweth our frame, 
and rememberetii that we are but dust ? Or shall we not rather 
believe as the wise woman of Tekoahsaid to David three thou- 
sand years ago, "We must needs die, and are as water spilt on 
the ground, and God does not take away life, but devises 
devices that the wanderer may not forever be expelled from 
him" (2 Sam. xiv: 14). 



\xA$ti JSuteti J^ttm— A. D. 1831. 

"Owen Meredith" utters the spirit and language 
of our faith in these lines ; they are found in "Lucile" : 

The dial 
Beceives many shades, and points to the sun, — 
The shadows are many, the sunlight is one. 
Life's sorrows still fluctuate ; God's love does not, 
And his love is unchanged, when it changes our lot. 

"And is it too late?" 
No ! for time is a fiction, and limits not fate, — 
Thought alone is eternal, time thralls it in vain. 
For the thought that springs upward and yearns to regain 
The pure source of spirit, there is no too late. 

There is purpose in pain, 
Otherwise it were devilish. I trust in my soul 
That the great master-hand which sweeps over the whole 
Of this deep harp of life, if at moments it stretch 
To shrill tension, some one wailing nerve, means to fetch 
Its response the truest, most stringent, and smart ; 



298 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Its pathos the purest from out the wrung heart, 
"Whose faculties, placid it may be, if less 
Sharply strung, sharply writhen, had failed to express. 
Just the one note the great final harmony needs. 



There is no death ! The stars go down 
To rise upon some fairer shore ; 

And bright in heaven's jeweled crown 
They shine on high forevermore. 

There is no death ! the dust we tread 

Shall change beneath the Summer showers 

To golden grain or mellow fruit, 
Or smile in rainbow-tinted flowers. 

There is no death ! An angel form 

"Walks o'er the earth with silent tread ; 

He bears our best loved things away, 
And then we think that they are dead. 

He leaves our hearts all desolate — 

He plucks our sweetest, fairest flowers ; 

Transplanted into bliss, they now 
Adorn in heaven immortal bowers. 



H[tilmm ||0rm + — A. D. 1834. 

In a remarkable poem republished from the 
English, by Roberts Brothers, in 1879, entitled "The 
Epic of Hades," Hades is represented under its pagan 
aspects, and the author describes the dramatis persons 
of the old mythology, — Tantalus, Sisyphus, Helen,, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 299 

Artemis, Psyche, Medusa, Phaedra, Clytemnestra — 
each of whom tells his or her sad story. Even the 
very worst of these lost souls — the tyrant Tantalus, 
the murderer Phaedra, Medusa, the snake-crowned — 
all are to be healed and saved. The punishment of 
Hades will one day 

Grow to healing, when the concrete stain 
Of life and act were purged, and the cleansed soul, 
Benewed by the slow wear and work of time, 
Soared after seons of days. 



\tu+ $tfpt ©nj + 

Professor of Biblical Criticism, Queen's College, 
Belfast, Ireland. 

If the inflictions visited on men by human law are intended 
to be a merciful chastisement ; if the inflictions occasioned by 
natural law also acknowledge a benignant aim, what ground 
have we for supposing that the punishments of eternity are 
exclusively retributive, intended to vindicate the majesty of an 
outraged law, and having nothing to do in the way of improving 
the offender himself ? Does not the mercy apparent in all nat- 
ural castigation, authorize the expectation that a benignant pur- 
pose toward the sufferer will characterize the punishment of 
eternity? Over the porch of the hell described by Dante was 
written the dreary inscription : — "Hope cannot enter here " ; but 
such a prison-house of unending torments is not the hell of him 
who punishes us for our good ; who, in all the length and breadth 
of this creation has not admitted a single contrivance intended 
to inflict pain — and only to inflict pain. And in the case of 
human legislation, increasing mercy to the offender has come, 



300 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

as it ever will come, with our increasing civilization. The 
better man is, the stronger his recoil against the mere punish- 
ment of vengeance ; therefore, against the capital penalty of 
human law, as well as against the capital penalty of supposed 
Divine law, that is, everlasting punishment. Would not the 
conscience of the community rise up in indignant reprobation 
if the law of man condemned to the severest of penalties, him 
who for the first time stood in the category of the "drunken and 
disorderly" ? And is the disproportion between offence and pun- 
ishment greater in this case than in the case of one condemned 
to misery unending, never to cease or be mitigated forever, on 
account of a few years in time ? "While all enlightened communi- 
ties, therefore, are shaping their penal codes, it cannot be 
improper or unreasonable for us to ask of popular orthodoxy to 
relax the penal code, and to obliterate from its statute books 
barbarous laws, and laws, too, that to their barbarism add injus- 
tice, making no distinction between the major and the minor 
in offence. 



"All ye are brethren!" Down the aisle of ages, 
The Master's word comes ringing from afar, • 
And the sad Past's tear-blotted, sin-stained pages, 
Are lit with brightness from the Bethlehem star. 

The sightless stranger by the wayside crying, 
The lonely widow of her son bereft, 
The helpless cripple at Bethesda lying, 
The leper by his nearest kindred left, 
These were his brethren ; to one certain haven 
We voyage on across the same deep sea, 
And upon every brow alike is graven 
The common seal of our humanity. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 301 

f + § + tpun$, i + JL, JL |r- i* 

Mr. Wilkins is chaplain to the English residents 
of Hanover. 

A Being capable of deliberately punishing with everlast- 
ing torment any one of his creatures, whatever that creature 
has done or left undone, cannot be trusted by any one of his 
creatures, whatever that creature does or leaves undone. All 
creatures are in peril of everlasting torment, if one creature is 
in that peril. The word, the solemn promise of a Being capable 
of inflicting, under any circumstances, such a punishment, is 
entirely worthless. 



JM !f»rt*— A. D. 1839. 

Just now I missed from hall and stair 
A joyful treble, that had grown 
As dear to me as that grave tone 

That tells the world my older care. 

And little footsteps on the floor 
Were stayed. I laid aside my pen, 
Forgot my theme, and listened — then 

Stole softly to the library door. 

No sight ! no sound ! — a moment's freak 
Of fancy thrilled my pulses through; 
"If — no" — and yet that fancy drew 

A father's blood from heart and cheek. 

And then — I found him ! There he lay, 
Surprised by sleep, caught in the act, 



302 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

The rosy Vandal who had sacked 
His little town, and thought it play. 

The shattered vase, the broken jar, 
A match still smouldering on the floor, 
The inkstand's purple pool of gore, 

The chessmen scattered near and far, 

Strewn leaves of albums lightly pressed, — 
This wicked "Baby of the Woods," — 
In fact, of all the household goods, 

This son and heir was seized, possessed. 

Yet all in vain ; for sleep had caught 

The hand that reached, the feet that strayed, 
And, fallen in that ambuscade, 

The victor was himself o'erwrought. 

What though torn leaves and tattered book 
Still testified his deep disgrace S 
I stooped and kissed the inky face, 

With its demure and calm outlook. 

Then back I stole, and half beguiled 
My guilt in trust that when my sleep 
Should come, there might be One who'd keep 

An equal mercy for his child. 



\m. Upliimtt #4«l 3NH •♦ % 

Eev. William Archer Butler, M. A., Professor of 
Moral Philosophy, University of Dublin, writes : 

Were it possible for man's imagination to conceive the 
horrors of such a doom as this (endless punishment), all rea- 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 303 

soning about it were at an end; it would scorch and wither all 
the powers of human thought. Human life were at a stand 
could these things be really felt as they deserve, even for him 
who can humbly trust himself, comparatively secure in faith and 
obedience, were the thin veil of this shadowy life suddenly with- 
drawn, and these immortal agonies, that never dying death, 
made known in the way of direct perception, — and those, it may 
be, with the keen sympathies and characteristics that the Chris- 
tian loves and values, seen to be at last among the victims of 
that irreparable doom, — can we doubt that he would come forth 
with intellect blanched and idealess from a sight too terrible 
for any whose faculties are not in the scale of eternity itself ? 
It is God's mercy that we can believe what adequately to con- 
ceive were death. 



This popular lyric is a perfect statement of the 
parable of the lost sheep, and of universal salvation. 
All the lost are saved. 

There were ninety-and-nine that safely lay 

In the shelter of the fold, 
But one was out on the hills away, 
' . Far off from the gates of gold — • 

Away on the mountains wild and bare, 
Away from the gentle shepherd's care. 

Lord, thou hast here thy ninety-and-nine ; 

Are they not enough for thee ? 
And the Shepherd made answer, "This of mine 

Has wandered away from me ; 
And, although the road be rough and steep, 
I go to the desert to find my sheep." 



304 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

But none of the ransomed ever knew 

How deep were the waters crossed, 
Nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed thro*, 

Ere he found his sheep that was lost. 
Out in the desert he heard its cry — 
Sick and helpless and ready to die. 

Lord, whence are those blood drops all the way, 

That mark the mountain's track?" 
"They were shed for one who had gone astray 

Ere the Shepherd could bring him back." 
"Lord, whence are thy hands so rent and torn?" 
"They are. pierced to-night by many a thorn." 

And all thro' the mountains, thunder riven, 

And up from the rocky steep, 
There rose a cry to the gates of heaven, 

"Rejoice, I have found my sheep !" 
And the angels echoed around the throne, 
"Rejoice ! for the Lord brings back his own V 



f rijftt i^Jteir imttpMi 

John MacLeod Campbell is a Scotch clergyman 
remarkable for his abilily, erudition, insight, and the 
sweetness of his life. He is the spiritual father of 
some of the choice spirits of Scotland ; Erskine, Mac- 
Leod, and others — all Universalists. We have, unfor- 
tunately, not obtained passages from his pen. But he 
is one of the chief apostles of the rising faith. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 305 

\m. JKtei \m% •$. J. 

If we cease to fear the flames of hell, we ought only the 
more to dread the torments of conscience. Beligion itself 
becomes more spiritual when its hopes have become so. The 
magnificent idea of universal salvation, that sacred affirmation, 
forms part, tacit or avowed, of the confession of faith of the 
elite of the church, and rests on the essential ethical character 
of the future life. 

The Rev. Albert Reville, D. D., is minister of the 
French Reformed church, Rotterdam. 



J*. £♦ %mm&$ JamdL— A. D. 1836. 

Dr. Bennett, Universalist, sings his faith in these 
sweet words : 

There's a land that is fairer than day, 

And by faith we can see it afar, 
For the Father waits over the way, 

To prepare us a dwelling place there. 
In the sweet By-and-by, 

"We shall meet on that beautiful shore. 

We shall sing on that beautiful shore 
The melodious songs of the blest, 

And our spirits shall sorrow no more, 
Not a sigh for the blessing of rest. 

In the sweet By-and-by, 
We shall meet on that beautiful shore. 

To our bountiful Father above 
We will offer the t * ibute of praise, 
20 



dOb A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

For the glorious gift of his love, 

And the blessing that hallows our days. 

In the sweet By-and-by 

We shall meet on that beautiful shore. 

In a note to the compiler of this volume Dr. Ben- 
nett writes : 

Please remember that there are only three stanzas. The 
Methodists have added two stanzas, which I utterly repudiate 
as doing violence to the spirit, intent and teaching of the hymn, 



| + fttjsrsdL— A. D. 1838. 

Even the most noted "skeptic" of the present day 
obtains a glimpse of the grandest of truths : 

Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks 
of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. 
We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing 
cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there 
comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star, 
and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. He who sleeps 
here, when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the 
return of health, whispered with his latest breath : — "I am bet- 
ter now." Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas, and 
tears and fears, that these dear words are true of all the count- 
less dead. 

Kev. E. H. Pullman, of Baltimore, says : — I recall 
an incident in my acquaintance with Mr. Ingersoll. 
We were conversing one day on some topic that I have 
forgotten, when we were met by a mutual friend, a 
leading member of a Presbyterian church, who in a 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 307 

somewhat facetious way sought to cast a reflection 
upon me for my friendly relations with the celebrated 
infidel. Mr. Ingersoll on the instant replied : 

I don't know how Mr. Pullman feels about it, but for myself 
I can say, that if there is a God, and he is such a being as Mr. 
Pullman describes, I can bow before him, and give him all my 
heart. He says God is Love, made the world in love, and in 
perfect wisdom, and well adapted to serve the divine purpose- 
He then made a family, all of them have sinned, and some of 
them have fallen very low, but God is determined, according to 
Mr. Pullman, to stand by his family, every one of them, let 
come what will come, until he makes them all respectable. This 
standing by his family, as every true father ought to do, is 
what I like in Mr. Pullman's idea of God. But if there is a 
God, and he has created a family, and will at last turn against 
most of them, and in burning wrath cast them into hell forever, 
as you describe, I should hate him — he is not as good as I am, 
for I propose to stand by my family and every member of it as 
long as I live. It is an insult to ask me to love and worship 
a God who is guilty of doing what we would detest in an 
earthly father. 



Evil shall not triumph over God in any case, but he shall 
triumph in every case over it ; and there will come a glorious day 
when angels, and archangels, and men, and all creatures in 
heaven and on earth, and in the sea, and all things that are 
therein, shall unite in jubilant and exultant shouts and songs 
of praise and thanksgiving at the overthrow of all sin, and sor- 
row, and separation, in the universe of God, and the restora- 
tion of that universe to the favor of its Creator. 



308 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

IpBwrr % HDrlfeq* 

"Cain's Prayer" by this author, opens the door, 
which once open, could never be closed. Cain is repre- 
sented — during our civil war — "an awful shade, with 
blood-red hands, crying to God" : 

Six thousand years ! Six thousand years ! 

Must I still wander on this penal sod, 
That first I gave to penal tears, 

O thou avenging God?" 

At the end of the prayer the poet says : 

The wailing blood-worn spirit ceased — the sky 
By one great levin-bolt was riven, 
And thro' the parted clouds a lustrous eye 
Looked down while voices softly murmured by, 
And rainbows melted into melody, 
"Beleased, forgiven!" 



On Trinity Sunday the Athanasian' Creed, a 
heathen document, is read in some Christian churches. 
The practice is well satirized in this brief strain : 

When fretted almost past endurance 
By bold and impudent assurance, 
Or angered by some bare-faced sham, 
A man lets out a hasty "damn," 
The orthodox predict his bane, 
And stigmatize him as "profane ;" 
But if within the church's bound, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 309 

Where holiest emblems gird him round, 
He damns at least one-half mankind, 
Dooms them to Satan sealed and signed, 
And does this free from passion's bias, 
Lo I then they call him "good and pious !" 



|4« laij*— A. D. 1840. 

In "Little Breeches" John Hay expresses a grow- 
ing conviction among all Christian people, that a self- 
ish seeking of one's own "salvation" is poor business, 
and that in the future life, self-sacrifice will be the 
brightest possible virtue, as here it is the noblest dis- 
position. "Getting religion" is cheap, compared with 
serving and helping those that need, and increasing 
numbers will say with him : 

I think that saving a little child, 
And bringing him back to his own, 

Is a durned sight better business 
Than loafing around the throne. 

In "Jim Bludsoe, " he sets forth the truth that the 
germ of goodness is in all souls, and that even the 
worst posssess that which is worth saving. The 
engineer of the "Prairie Belle" "weren't no saint," but 
he'd resolved "if ever the Prairie Belle tuck fire 

He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank 
Till the last soul got ashore." 

He was as good as his word, and all but himself 



310 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

reached shore in safety. He "passed in his checks/' 
and the poet voices the general verdict when he says : 

At the jedgment, 
I'd run my chance with Jim, 

'Longside of some pious gentleman 
That wouldn't shook hands with him. 

He seen his duty, a dead sure thing, 
And went for it, thar and then ; 

And Christ ain't agoin' to be too hard 
On a man that died for men. 

The spirit of these and of hundreds of the most 
popular of modern poems is irreconcilably hostile to 
the doctrines of the partialist church. 



A beautiful thought gains continual credence 
among Christians, jthat heaven's gates are always 
open, as saith the Kevelator, "They shall not be shut 
day nor night." One of the sweetest of modern sacred 
lyrics tells this thought well : 

'Twas whispered one morning in heaven, 

How the little white angel May 
Sat ever beside the portal, 

Sorrowing all the day, 

Because of her mother, on earth, sorrowing over 
her departure. And she prayed that the gates of heaven 
might be placed ajar that a glimmer of light might 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 311 

fall on the weeping mother. The stately warden 
refused. 

Then up rose Mary, the blessed, 

Sweet Mary, the mother of Christ, 
Her hand on the hand of the angel 

She laid, and the touch sufficed. 

Then turned was the key in the portal, 

Fell ringing the golden bar, 
And lo ! in the little child's fingers, 

Stood the beautiful gates ajar ! 

"And this key for no further using, 

To my blessed Son shall be given," 
Said Mary, the mother of Jesus, 

Tenderest heart in heaven. 

Now, never a sad-eyed mother 

But may catch the glory afar, 
Since safe in the Lord Christ's bosom, 

Are the keys of the gates ajar, 
Safe hid in the dear Christ's bosom, 

And the gates forever ajar. 



1|ritari JSurijmmtn — A. D. 1841. 

In "The Vision of the Man Accurst" Buchanan 
represents judgment as over, and all the world redeemed 
save one man, an incarnation of depravity, who 
mocked God and holy things, and who so compelled 
the disgust of the blessed angels that they besought 
God to annihilate him. But God replied, "What I 



312 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

have made, a living soul, cannot be unmade, but 
endures forever." The "Man Accurst" only asked 
one thing, that one being might share his exile. Two 
seraphs volunteered to leave heaven and attend the 
monster. 

Then said the Lord, 
"Will they go forth with him?" A voice replied, — 
"He grew within my womb — my milk was white 
Upon his lips. I will go forth with him!" 
And a voice cried, "I will go forth with him ; 
I have kist his lips, I have lain upon his breast, 
I bare him children, and I closed his eyes ; 
I will go forth with him !" Still hushedly 
Showered down the Thought Divine, the Waters of Life 
Flowed softly, sadly ; for an alien sound, 
A piteous human cry, a sob forlorn, 
Thrill'd to the heart of heaven. The man wept ; 
And in a voice of most exceeding peace 
The Lord said (while against the Breast Divine 
The Waters of Life leapt, gleaming, gladdening), — 
"The man is saved ; let the man enter in !" 

A spirited poem in the same volume entitled 
"Doom," is very suggestive : 

Master if there be doom, 

All men are bereaven ! 
If in the universe, 
One spirit receive the curse, 

Alas for heaven ! 
If there be doom for one, 
Thou, Master, art undone. 

Were I a soul in heaven, 

Afar from pain, 
Yea, on thy breast of snow, 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 313 

At the scream of one below, 

I should scream again. 
Art thou less piteous than 
The conception of a man? 

Buchanan's "Book of Orm, " and notably "The Vis- 
ion of the Man Accurst" utters throughout the spirit 
of the lines quoted above. 



Ipattq %tg drotttaft — A. D. 1842. 

A resident of Columbus, Wis., Mrs. Griswold is 
one of the sweet singers of the Universalist faith. 
"The Missing Ship" is one of her characteristic songs. 

From out a sheltered, sunny bay, 

With white sails rustling in the breeze, 

The proud ship like a sea gull swept 
Across the distant purple seas. 

But somewhere on the foaming deep, 
The ship for angry waves was sport, 

And all we know is, that she ne'er 

Dropped anchor in the wished-for port. 

And many an anxious, troubled heart, 
Cries, "Where is she," with trembling lip. 

God only knows, for shades surround 
That dreamy thing, a missing ship. 

In the broad sea, humanity, 

A gallant bark with us set sail, 
But drifting on, our courses changed 

With the first rising of the gale. 



314: A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

And we have spoken many a sail, 
And waited answer with white lip, 

In hopes to hear from one who is 
To us, through life, a missing ship. 

But never sounds the welcome name, 
When trumpets answer o'er the sea; 

Yet "sail ahoy," still starts the thought 
That this the missing craft may be. 

Is she afloat a shattered wreck, 
Or lies she deep in coral caves, 

Or is she where those floating bergs 
Wedge them within their icy graves? 

We cannot know, until we gain 

The port for which we all are bound- 
But there we know all sails will meet, 
And every missing ship be found. 



As this volume was ready to be issued from the 
press, the following additional testimonies were dis- 
covered : 

From an oriental poem, translated by Eev. W. K. 
Alger : 

And in His home though paeans swept the halls, 

And glory domed the universal height, 
If over one poor soul hell spread its palls 

There would be night, and wailing in the night. 



^uripite*— B. a 480. 

Goodness and being in the gods are one, 

He who imputes ill to them makes them none. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 315 

ffptrtm ftmu^— A. D. 1768. 

All human nature will finally be led to the image of God. 
Obedience is essential to the immortality of humanity. 



jkbft JJmt%— A. D. 1792-1868. 

The famous author of "Jack Downing's Letters" 
thus declares : 

In looking back upon a laborious literary life, extending 
through more than half a century, in which the drudgery of 
editorial duties greatly preponderates, and summing up the 
little it has apparently brought me in return, I should despair 
of human effort but for one comforting consideration. Thou- 
sands of men before me have lived and labored and died in 
the same path that fate hath led me in. I but follow in their 
footsteps. They lived not for themselves, but for the good of 
mankind — perhaps, some unconsciously — and, probably, some 
to little purpose ; and yet, they were all in their way silent 
workers in solving the great problem of life — soldiers fighting 
in the great battle of good against evil — intelligence against 
ignorance. If every one of all the thousands only combatted 
a single error, or evolved a single truth, or threw a ray of 
light where erst was darkness, he surely had not lived in vain. 
And so I, taking heart of grace by these reflections, and the 
remembrance of their lives, would humbly add my life's testi- 
mony to theirs. 

I know that sooner or later "God's kingdom "will come, 
and his will will be done on earth as it is in heaven." It will 
come when good shall have triumphed over evil — when man- 
kind shall understand and appreciate the beauty of holiness. 
I do not believe so much in human creeds as I do in the Sermon 
on the Mount. I have sought to understand that, and believe 
that I do. At all events, in looking back upon all my literary 



316 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

efforts, I cannot recall anything I have ever written, however 
humble its merits, which I should now blush to own, or which 
was not actuated by some motive which I believed to have 
been high and sincere. Believing that those who wield the 
power of the press had grave moral responsibilities — feeling 
that it ought to be the great humanizer, the mighty engine to 
combat sin and error, and bring to virtue and goodness the 
great and eternal victory, I have not been what the world 
would call a successful editor; but I have the satisfaction of 
believing if I have not done all the good with my pen that I 
have sought and hoped, it has never done any harm. And 
now I lay it aside — it may be forever — only praying if any 
of mine ever take it up that they will use it as I have sought 
to do, — and when their time shall come in turn to resign it, 
that the world's progress toward universal goodness may have 
had some stronger help from their hands than mine. 

From "Waifs of Half a Century," soon to be pub- 
lished, communicated to us by his son Appleton Oak- 
Smith. 



Jrifor 1* (Xtmtqf) jtott — A. D. 1809-1842. 

This woman of genius, early called away, answers 
the question "What is Universalism ?" in these lines : 

It is what dost thou ask ? "lis the sunbeam that dries 
The night-gathered tears from the violet's eyes — ■ 
That warms the cold earth round the valueless thorn, 
And flings through the darkness a beautiful morn. 

What is it ? The perfume which steals from sweet flowers, 
When the sick heart is pining for Summer's loved showers; 
The rain-drop that falls on the desolate leaf; 
The oil that composes the billows of grief. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 317 

What is it ? The young breeze, whose pinions unfurled, 
Stay not till their choice gifts have circled the world ; 
A harp-tone at midnight, when nature is still, 
Or the voice of a dove by a pine-shaded rill. 

What is it ? A star on the wild heaving sea, 
Prostrating the proud on a prayer-bended knee ; 
A fire that refineth the metal within ; 
The canker which gnaws at the vitals of sin. 

What is it ? 'Tis mercy, 'tis justice, 'tis truth — 
The staff of the aged, the glory of youth ; 
The rainbow of promise, to brighten our tears ; 
A lamp in death's valley dispersing our fears. 

What is it ? Thou askest — thy answer is there 
In thy own swelling heart, with its beautiful prayer ; 
It breathes through all nature — it centers above — 
'Tis our own spirit's essence — 'tis infinite love. 



Ifforatq If igpttpJij — A. D. 1820. 

This immortal philanthropist found the incentive 
to her divine life in the doctrine of a universal deliv- 
ance from sin. She says : 

God must be accomplishing a design invariable and with- 
out the shadow of turning, the design to save every one of us 
everlastingly. 



|*ammt fpfej — A - D - 1841 - 

The poet of the Sierras voices the indignant feel- 
ing that possesss all genuine souls, when reflecting on 



318 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

"hell" and "heaven" as they must be if the common 
theories — and the only possible theories on which 
they can be maintained — are true. 

Take hell and heaven undenied, 
Yet were the two placed side by side, 
Placed full before me for my choice, 
As they are pictured, best and worst, 
As they are peopled, tame and bold, 
The canonized, and the accursed 
Who dared to think, and thinking speak, 
And speaking act, bold cheek to cheek, 
I would in transports choose the first, 
And enter hell with lifted voice. 



Principal Caird, one of the most eminent of Scotch 
divines, speaks thus clearly in a sermon contained in a 
volume of "Scotch Sermons" published by the "Broad 
Church" Party of the Church of Scotland. His 
topic is "The Union of God." 

The perfection of man is not the perfection of the Jew, nor 
of the Greek, nor of the Roman ; but there is a richer, fuller, 
more complex life, into which the Hebrew consciousness of 
holiness and sin, the ideal of beauty of the Greek, the sense, 
law and order which Rome left as her legacy to mankind, flow 
together and are blended in the unity of Christian civilization 
of the modern world. And that, too, in its turn, is still far 
short of that ideal perfection which our Christian faith reveals, 
and for the realization of what it calls us to live and labor. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 319 

Eighteen centuries ago a vision of human perfection, a revela- 
tion of the hidden possibilities of our nature broke upon the 
world in the person and life of Jesus Christ, and, as we con- 
trast with this the highest attainments which the best of men 
or communities have yet reached, it seems an ideal toward 
which as a yet far distant goal, with slow and stumbling steps, 

humanity is tending For no ideal of 

a perfect state ; no dream of a golden age or paradise restored 
which has ever visited the imagination of genius, or risen 
before the rapt gaze of inspired seer or prophet, can surpass 
the future of universal light and love which Christianity 
encourages us to hope for as the destiny of our race, — that time 
when human society shall be permeated through and through 
with the spirit of Jesus Christ, and the whole race and every 
individual member of it shall rise to the point of moral and 
spiritual elevation which that life represents when "we shall all 
come into the unity of the faith, and knowledge of the Son of 
God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of 
the fullness of Christ." 

The Cary sisters, Alice (1820-1871) and Phoebe 
(1824-1871), were born about eight miles north of 
Cincinnati, 0., and began their literary career by 
writing for The Star in the West, a Universalist 
paper, Cincinnati, 0, They were reared in the 
Universalist faith, and adhered to it until death, and 
died sustained by it. They have left many evidences 
of the power of their cheerful religion to inspire gen- 
uine poetry. 



320 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Of Phoebe, Mrs. M. C. Ames, in her '^Memorial," 
says: — "Through the. teachings of her parents, and 
the promptings of her own soul, Phoebe Cary believed 
in the final restoration, from sin to happiness, of the 
entire human race, through the love of the Father 
and the atonement of Jesus Christ." Of her father 
Phoebe says : — "He was a tender, loving father, who 
sang his children to sleep with holy hymns, and 
habitually went about his work repeating the grand 
old Hebrew poets and the sweet and precious prom- 
ises of the New Testament of our Lord." 

Writes Mrs. Clemmer Ames : — "Why should her 
'Dying Hymn' be less the hymn of a dying saint, if 
she did believe that the mercy of her Heavenly 
Father and the atonement of Jesus Christ, would, in 
the fullness of eternity, redeem from sin, and gather 
into everlasting peace the whole family of man? 
Without this faith, at times human life would have 
been to her intolerable. It was her soul's consola- 
tion to say : 

Nay, but 'tis not the end : 

God were not God if such a thing could be, — 

If not in time, then in eternity 

There must be room for penitence to mend 

Life's broken chance, — else noise of wars 

"Would unmake heaven. 

Phoebe says of Alice : — "Though singularly lib- 
eral and unsectarian in her views, she always pre- 
served a strong attachment to the church of her 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 321 

parents, and, in the main, accepted its doctrines. 
She most firmly believed in a God whose loving 
kindness is so deep and so unchangeable, that there 
# can never come a time to even the vilest sinner, in all 
the ages of eternity, when, if he arise and go to him, 
his Father will not see him afar off and have com- 
passion on him. In this faith, which she has so often 
sang, she lived, and wrought, and hoped ; and in this 
faith, which grew stronger, deeper, and more assured 
with years of sorrow, and trial, and sickness, she 
passed from death unto life." It was this faith which 
caused her to sing : 

Free will cannot go 
Outside of mercy 

And to say : 

Great God, we know not what we know, 

Or what we are, or are to be ! 
We only trust we cannot go 

Through sin's disgrace outside of Thee ; 
And trust that tho' we're driven in 

And forced upon thy name to call, 
At last, by very strength of sin, 

Thou wilt have mercy on us all ! 

Phoebe expresses the great thought in "Waiting 
for the Change": 

Though some, whose presence once 

Sweet comfort round me shed, 
Here in the body walk no more 

The way that I must tread, 



322 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

Not they, but what they were, 
Went to the house of fear ; 

They were the incorruptible — 
They left corruption here. 

The veil of flesh that hid 

Is softly drawn aside ; 
More clearly I behold them now 

Than those who never died. 

Who died ! What means that word, 
Of men so much abhored ? 

Caught up in clouds of heaven to be 
Forever with the Lord ! 



Thank God for all my loved, 

That out of pain and care 
Have safely reached the heavenly heights 

And stay to meet me there ! 

Her immortal hymn, "Nearer Home," is the 
consummate flower of our holy religion, in song : 

One sweetly solemn thought 

Comes to me o'er and o'er; 
I'm nearer home to-day 

Than I ever have been before. 

Nearer my Father's home 

Where the many mansions be ; 
Nearer the great white throne, 

Nearer the crystal sea ; 

Nearer the bound of life, 

Where we lay our burdens down; 

Nearer leaving the cross, 
Nearer gaining the crown. 



A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 323 

But lying darkly between, 

Winding down through the night, 
Is the silent, unknown stream 

That leads at last to the light. 

Closer and closer my steps 

Come to the dread abysm ; 
Closer Death to my lips 

Presses the awful chrism. 

Oh, if my mortal feet 

Have almost gained the brink, 
If it be I am nearer home 

Even to-day than I think ; 

Father perfect my trust ; 

Let my spirit feel in death 
That her feet are firmly set 

On the rock of a living faith! 



J[ttlttttpttXItt$* 

The philosophy of Universalism imparts this 

optimistic spirit to the genuine believer : 

With patient heart thy course of duty run; 
God nothing does, nor suffers to be done, 
But thou woulds't do thyself, if thou coulds't see 
The end of all he does as well as He. 



324 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 

The compiler acknowledges his indebtedness to the 
following persons, who have aided him by referring 
him to authors, or by sending him extracts pertaining 
to the subject treated : — Kevs. J. S. Cantwell, D. D., 
E. L. Bexford, D. D., N. S. Hill, J. Lyon, G. 
W. Whitney, Varnum Lincoln, Kichard Eddy, C, W. 
Tomlinson, S. B. Ward, G. W. Lawrence, G. Collins, 
Geo. Hill, 0. F. Safford, J. A. Hoyt, and J. F. Sim- 
mons, and Hon. Israel Washburne, Charles Doan, J. 
C. Cox, H.H. Watson, Dr. C. Woodhouse, and Mary A. 
Parker. Besides these, a large number of correspond- 
ents have expressed an interest in the work, and 
referred us to passages already in our possession. 

We regret that we have been compelled to omit 
much that we had gathered, of the material for this 
volume. It so accumulated on our hands that we 
were forced to abridge our extracts, and even reject 
authors, to prevent the book from attaining inordinate 
proportions. 



FORTY BIBLE REASONS. 

~THIS ABLE SUMMABY OF THE BIBLE ABGU- 

•*• ment in behalf of Universal Salvation, is by Dr. Dolphus Skinner. 
It is a capital document for distribution. 

THE RICH MA1T A1TD LAZARUS. 

-THE EXPOSITION OF THE PABABLE OF DIVES 

^ and Lazarus is by the Editor of The New Covenant. It is a good 
tract for general circulation. It exhaustively treats that parable. 

THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 

TS BY THE EDITOR OF The New Covenant, and 

^ is a full exposition of that important subject. 

THE MISTAKES OF ING-ERSOLL. 

TS THE BEST BE VIEW OF INGEBSOLL, and the 

■*■ strongest reply to his attacks on the Bible that has yet appeared. By 
Rev. Dr. Ryder. 

*#*Any one of the above will be sent to any address for 5 cents, or all four 
for 1 5c. Six for 23c, or thirty for $1 of any one of the series will be sent. 

The ZBibtjIE IP:ko ^untid Con. 
qubtwo volumes "bible proofs" and "bible 

^■^ Threatenings Explained," present a bird's-eye view of the doctrines of the 
Bible on the great subject of the Final Destiny of Mankind. "B ble 
Proofs" begins with Genesis and traces the great doctrine of the 
final holiness and happiness of all mankind, to the end of Reve- 
lations, giving the prominent passages, and just enough of com- 
ment to weld the whole together in ati unbroken chain. It is A MOST 
EFFICIENT MISSIO N ARY giving the Scriptural Proofs of the great doctrine 
of A WORLD'S SALVATION in a manner so convincing as to be un- 
answerable. 

"It is the best Missionary Document we have," says Rev. J. P. McLean. 

"Sible Threatenings Explained" takes up eve-y so-called "orthodox" text and 
proves that all the passages that are ever employed as missiles against Uni- 
versal Salvation are perfectly in accordance with the promises of the Bible. 

With Bible Proofs in one hand, and Bible Threatenings in the other, any 
Universalist will be armed cap-a-pie, and thus armed "one can chase a thou- 
sand, and two put ten thousand to flight." It is the most valuable of docu. 
men s for distribution among those who think the law contradicts the prom- 
ises. It shows conclusively that there is not a text in the Bible that sus- 
tains the doctrine of Endless Torment. 

j&iPEither book will be sent by mail, postpaid, for 50 cents, or both for 
90 cents. 

iHI^isrsoiisr-Lo^riEie, Debate. 

-THIS DISCUSSION OCCUPIED FOUB EVENINGS 

■*• of two hours each, in West Side, la., in March, 1879. Dr. Hanson 
defended UNIVERSAL SALVATION during the first two evenings, 
and Mr. Lozter replied. Mr. Lozier led in support of ENDLESS 
MISERY the two following evenings, and Dr. Hanson replied. The 
struggle was short, sharp, and, any unprejudiced mind will say, 
decisive. It much resembles a jug, the handle on one side, and, very certainly 
in "our man's" hand. Bead it,' and loan it. AS A MISSIONARY WORK it 
will do much good. Send to The New Covenant Office, Chicago, for it. 
Price, 30 cents. 

Thie ZBizbhijIE] ZHZzbUjZLu 

-THIS SMALL BUT COMPACT BOOK TBACES THE 

■*■ WORD HELL through the Bible, giving every passage in which 
it occurs, with a full exposition of each passage. The four words 
rendered Hell in the Bible are SHEOL. HADEES, TARTARUS, and 
GEHENNA. They are all explained, and ,it is shown that THE BIBLE 
HELL IS IN THIS WORLD, and tha'. it is LIMITED IN DURATION. 
The book is only 50 cents. Address, J. TV. HANSON, D. D., Cbicago. 



TS A BOOK OF DAILY WOKSHIP, containing a selec- 

^ tion ot Scripture, and a Piayer for Every Day in the Year, for Individual 
and Family Use. 

A i ew weeks after its publication the first edition was exhausted. It elicits 
the highest praise from our people, and deserves a place in every family. 

Here is what the critics say : 

"The collection is of almost infinite variety, and adapted to a wide range of 
conditions and requirements." — Alliance, Prof. Swing. 

"The book, we feel sure, will meet the wants of households and individuals 
of every creed and denomination."— Inter- Ocean. 

"Helpful and comforting."— Zion's Herald, Methodist. 

"The best book of its class now before the public."— Star in the West. 

"We know of no book in the wide range of religious literature, which, for. 
the purposes for which it is intended, surpasses 'Manna.' "—Leader. 

Price in cloth, $1.25 ; in leather, $2. 

CHEISTIA1T OHOZRuS-ILiS, 
A HYMN AND TUNE BOOK for the Congregation and 

■*^ the Home. Containing 330 Hymns and 100 Tunes, the very best oi 
the Hymnology and Music for the Church and the Home. 50c. each ; 
$5 a dozen ; $40 for 100. This is the cheapest, neatest and best Hymn and 
Tune Book published by our church. An Edition containing Responsive 
Services at 60cjs each ; $6.00 a dozen ; $50.00 a hundred. 

JL. lEBiEsiFonsrsi-^riE Seevice. 

THIS MANUAL IS FOE BESPONSIVE SEBVICES 

"*- in church. It contains Twelve Services, one for the Sundays of each 
month, consisting of appropriate Scripture Sentences and a brief prayer. 
They are printed in large, clear type, on pages uniform with Christian 
Chorals, and can be had separate or bound with the Chorals. Single copies of 
Responsive Service, by mail, postpaid, 15 cents. By the dozen, $1.50, by mail, 
postpaid. Ten dollars a hundred, by express, at expense of purchaser. When 
bound with the Chorals the book will cost 60 cents a copy, $6 a dozen, $50 
a hundred. Nothing is needed to relieve the bareness of the Protestant 
church worship, so much as a simple responsive service, and congregational 
singing. "Christian Chorals," and the "Responsive Service," are just the books 
our people need. Send for a specimen. 

TJ^ti^t-ei^s^^IjIst Catechism 

TS THE NAME OF A MOST EXCELLENT LITTLE 



* book of thirty -two pages, by REV. H. SLADE, issued from this 
office. A more valuable instrumentality in the Sunday School, 
lamily and Church has not recently been published. It goes 
thoroughly over the wide field indicated in the title, and in a stvle satis- 
factory to the adult mind, as well as adapted to the voung. The little Pur- 
itan gi 1, disgusted with the hard terms of the "Shorter Catechism," wauted 
to know why somebody did not make a kitty-chism., so that little girls could 
understand it. We have one here that all can understand, old and voung. 
We will send it to any address as follows :— Single copies, 10c ; 4 for 25c; 
10 for 50c ; $4.00 a hundred. 

.iL. Cloud oif 1 "^Titnesses 

TS A COLLECTION OF TESTIMONIES FKOM MEN 

■*• and women of genius, in behalf of the final triumph of good over evil. 
It embraces a large number of authors, and is a work of rare interest. By 
J. W. Hanson, D. D. . Price, $1.00. 

The ZbTzEJ-^r Cove^taitt, 

A FAMILY BELIGIOUS WEEKLY. Organ of the Uni- 

*■ * versalist Church in the Northwest. J. W. HANSON, D. D., Editor and 
Business Manager, Chicago, HI. 

Subscription price, $2.00 per annum, postage prepaid. Six months, $1.25. 
x or less than six months, 20 cents per month. If paid at the end of three 
months, $2.25 per annum. If paid at the end of six months, $2.50 per 
annum. Single copies, 5 cents. Fifty numbers in a year. 

***Any Universalist book or periodical, or any other work or journal pub- 
lished, sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of retail price. 




Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 






